U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) announced he is voting no to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) with Iran, known as the Iran Deal, during his Major Foreign Policy Address before approximately 400 students, faculty and members of the greater community at Seton Hall School of Diplomacy and International Relations in South Orange, NJ.
Unlike the many rabble-rousing and emotionally driven speeches that have clogged the media waves during the past months both for and against the Iran deal, Menendez stated no platitudes, no cliches, nor catch phrases as he explained his sometimes-complex analysis of the facts and insights and thought processes as to what the JCPA states and specifically why he is opposed to it.
He said that after following Iran’s nuclear ambition for the better part of two decades, he’s based his decision on two factors: if it is, in his judgment, in the national interest and security of our country to do so and second, in this case, “what it means for our great ally, the State of Israel and our other partners in the Gulf.”
Menendez said, unlike President Barack Obama’s generalization of others who have questioned or opposed the agreement, “I did not vote for the war in Iraq. I opposed it.” He said he’s not voting against it out of reflex, as his Republican colleagues do because the President proposes it. In fact, Menendez said he’s supported Obama about 98 percent of the time.
However, this is not an issue of supporting or opposing the President.
Senator Menendez said he started his analysis with the question, “Why does Iran, which has the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserves, with 157 billion barrels of crude oil and the world’s second-largest proven natural gas reserves with 1,193 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, need nuclear power for domestic energy?”
Despite claims that its nuclear program exists only for peaceful purposes, Iran has time and again violated the international will, United Nations Security Council resolutions, “and by deceit, deception and delay advanced their program to the point of being a threshold nuclear state,” said Menendez.
What the world believes has been going on at the Parchin military base, and what they now know was the development of Fordow (a uranium enrichment plant) covertly built inside a mountain, and Iran’s sponsorship of state terrorism are why sanctions were first established, he said.
The whole point of negotiations with Iran was to ensure it never would have weapons capability at any time, by dismantling it completely. “We thought it would be rollback for rollback—you roll back your infrastructure and we’ll roll back our sanctions. At the end of the day, what we appear to have is a rollback of sanctions and Iran only limiting its capability, but not dismantling or rolling it back.”
Menendez said when negotiations started, Secretary of State John Kerry told him of Arak, Iran’s Plutonium reactor, “they will either dismantle it or we will destroy it.” The Fordow fuel enrichment plant was to be closed as it was not necessary for a peaceful civilian nuclear program.
Menendez said Kerry told him that the Iranians would have to come clean about their activities at Parchin and agree to anytime, anywhere inspections. “We all know that fell by the wayside.”
This agreement leaves us with a totally different goal; instead of preventing nuclear proliferation, it’s to manage it or contain it, “which leaves us with a far less desirable, less secure and less certain world order.”
The senator went through his main concerns, the mothballing of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure for 10 years. Iran gets to keep all its centrifuges and repurpose them. In exchange, the United States and its allies are to lift all sanctions and “let billions of dollars flow back into Iran’s economy.”
After eight years, Iran gets to continue research and development, developing advanced centrifuges to faster models and after year 15, Iran can start enriching uranium to the point of fissile material for a bomb and will have no limits on its uranium stockpile.
Under the plan, there will be no more sanctions, and the international community commits to assisting Iran in developing an industrial-scale nuclear power program, complete with industrial-scale enrichment, said Menendez.
The treaty “fails to appreciate Iran’s history of deception in its nuclear program and its violations of the NPT (non-proliferation treaty).”
Part of the agreement is that the United States must not reintroduce the Iran Sanctions Act, which Menendez authored. If they are reintroduced or extended, Iran would be relieved of its commitments in part or in whole.
“If anything is a fantasy about this agreement, it is the belief that snapback, without Congressionally mandated sanctions, with the EU sanctions gone, and companies from around the world doing permissible business with Iran, will have any real effect.”
Menendez also asked the question, what will our friends in the region think when we ask them to not enrich or process uranium but we allow our enemies to do so?
Menendez said it took ten years for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) before they were allowed to inspect Parchin (a military complex used for implosion testing) and speak to Iranian nuclear scientists and review additional materials and documents, and “are now told that they will not have direct access to Parchin, the list of scientists the P5+1 wanted the IAEA to interview were rejected by Iran outright and they are now given three months to do all of their review and their analysis before they must deliver a report in December of this year.”
The U.S. Congress is not privy to how the inspections of soil and samples are to be collected because they are in documents that are under a confidentiality agreement between the IAEA and Iran. “Which they say is customary. This issue is anything but customary,” said Menendez.
Menendez said this deal does nothing more than kick today’s deal down the road for 10 or 15 years.
Menendez said that President Obama erroneously says that this agreement permanently stops Iran from having a nuclear bomb. “Let’s be clear. What the agreement does is to recommit Iran not to pursue a nuclear bomb, a promise they have already violated in the past. It recommits them to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, an agreement they have already violated in the past. It commits them to a new security resolution outlining their obligations while they have violated those in the past as well.”
Menendez said he rejects the statements made by Obama and Kerry that it’s this deal or war, because if that were true and the P5 rejected the agreement he does not believe we’d be at war with Iran today.
“A pathway to a better deal,” said Menendez, is to “disapprove this agreement without rejecting the entire agreement. We should direct the administration to re-negotiate by authorizing the continuation of negotiations on the Joint Plan of Action, which includes Iran’s $700 million-a-month lifeline, which to date has accrued to Iran’s benefit to the tune of $10 billion, and pausing further reductions of purchases of Iranian oil and other sanctions pursuant to the original JPOA. I’m even willing to consider authorizing a sweetener—a one-time release of a pre-determined amount of funds as a good faith down payment on the negotiations.”
Menendez said, “We should authorize now the means for Israel to address the Iranian threat on their own in the event that Iran accelerates its program, and to counter Iranian perceptions that our own threat to use force is not credible. And we should make it absolutely clear that we want a deal but we want the right deal.”
By Anne Phyllis Pinzow
