Iran Deal: The U.S. is about "to guarantee that the means of its own destruction will be in the hands of another nation," warns Dick Cheney. As it trusts Iran, this administration can't be trusted.
Former Vice President Cheney earned a special social media onslaught from the White House as he spoke to the American Enterprise Institute blasting the Iran deal on Tuesday.
Cheney suggested it might the first national suicide attempt in world history, but at least as compelling was his assertion that while the U.S. trusts terrorist Tehran, Americans cannot trust their current president.
"We are asked to rely on the word of a country that has cheated on every nuclear agreement to which they have been a party, that once they have the means in place to become a nuclear power, they won't do it," Cheney noted.
The trust issue is turned on its head, the former veep, Pentagon chief, Wyoming congressman and White House chief of staff said.
"A negotiation based on the premise that the United States had to gain the trust of the world's worst state sponsor of terror was never going to end well," he said.
Iran and the rest of the 190 signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty have no right to enrich uranium. Therefore, the concession to Iran by the U.S. "guts the fundamental principle at the heart of the NPT and makes it much more difficult for the international community to deny such a right to any other state."
In other words, it invites a nuclear arms race.
"America's friends and allies in the Middle East," Cheney said, "have watched the Iranians get the better of us in these negotiations. They know we are simultaneously withdrawing from the region and making cuts to our own nuclear arsenal and defense budget."
As a result, Cheney said, "they are more likely ... to determine that their own security requires that they possess their own nuclear weapons." That means Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other powers.
On Secretary of State John Kerry's startling turnaround from requiring Tehran to reveal the military aspects of its past nuclear activities to giving it a full pass, Cheney couldn't resist a comparison to Kerry's switcheroo on the Iraq War, which the Bush-Cheney 2004 team used against Kerry's presidential campaign:
"You could say he was for it before he was against it."
Cheney stressed that "every American president for well over a half-century has been committed to nuclear nonproliferation in the Middle East. Every one of them — until now." Obama and Kerry are telling Iran it can enrich uranium, have ICBMs and "also get back full swing into the arms trade."
He added: "Oh, yes, and here's $150 billion, which we implore you — please — not to share with your terrorist friends."
In the face of a likely Democrat Senate filibuster, denying a recorded floor vote, Cheney said that "anyone unwilling to stand up and be counted on this deal should not be serving in elective office."
What Cheney called "an intricately crafted capitulation" can and should still be defeated in Congress, but it will take the emergence of patriots with some real nerve. We don't see much in the Republican leaders, Sen. Mitch McConnell and Speaker John Boehner.
Elder statesman Cheney has stood up for the national security of America, highlighting this agreement's grave danger and the president's incurable dishonesty.
"Iran will not be convinced to abandon its program peacefully unless it knows it will face military action if it refuses to do so," Cheney stressed.
How about some statesmanship from GOP leaders still on the people's payroll?
