West of Eden: Eight Heritage fails—OK, seven and a half

The Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C. (Nah, it's a set design for The Fall of the House of Usher. by Mluisa Paci at Béhance).

Oh dear Flying Spaghetti Monster, here's a clickbait listicle from the Heritage Foundation,

8 Things Obama Got Wrong on the Iran Deal

bylined Michaela Dodge, "specializes in missile defense, nuclear weapons modernization and arms control as policy analyst for defense and strategic policy in The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies". I'll bet she does, and what you got, Michaela?

1. The president stated that, “Between now and the congressional vote in September, you are going to hear a lot of arguments against this deal, backed by tens of millions of dollars in advertising.”

This assertion is flat out wrong.

It is? How exactly? We're not going to hear many arguments against the deal? Or they won't have any advertising money behind them? Because Richard Silverstein is quoting the New York Times as saying that AIPAC's new Citizens for a Nuclear, Free Iran (no, just kidding about the comma, it's "Nuclear Free Iran" with a missing hyphen, except in my view if you vote against the agreement you are indeed voting for a nuclear Iran, free or otherwise) plans to spend between $20 million and $40 million on its own accord, which sounds like tens of millions right there, and finding from US Senate records that AIPAC has already spent $2 million on direct lobbying this year,

more than it’s ever spent in any previous six-month period since 1999   

so what's flat, out wrong, or flat-out wrong as you might put it if the Daily Signal had a functioning, sober editor who can tell a hyphen from a hymen?

If the substance of the deal was better, the administration wouldn’t have the problems it now has getting congressional support, along with the support of the American people (a majority of Americans, and Israelis for that matter, continue to favor a diplomatic solution).

Seriously, that's the answer, which, as alert readers will note, has no relation of any kind to the assertion it just denied, and could serve as a kind of definitional example of the non sequitur argument, as in

It will rain today.

That's flat-out wrong. If God wanted people to fly, He would have given them wings. 

as well as logically wrong in its own right, since it's known, as the LA Jewish Journal discovered, that about 48% of the population doesn't know enough about what is in the deal to make a decision, so that the quality of the substance of the deal is clearly not what is driving the numbers. Indeed, in Congress, it looks like those tens of millions of dollars (which you just failed to deny) might well have an influence.

2. “This is the strongest nonproliferation agreement ever negotiated” commented the president.

Ah. What stronger nonproliferations agreements can you cite to show Obama is wrong about this?

In reality, the Iran deal undermines previous U.S. nonproliferation policy by rewarding decades of covert and illegal nuclear activities by Iran, including those involving weapons.

That would be zero, then. Or, no argument at all other than a suggestion that Iran is getting a special present for answering the P5+1 "We will put sanctions on you until you make a deal assuring you will not build a bomb" by making a deal assuring they will not build a bomb, which has no relation to the assertion that this is the strongest agreement ever negotiated.  And sounds like butthurt because it's so unfair, when Israel's decades of covert and illegal nuclear activities, in particular those involving weapons, got them nothing but $4 billion a year from US taxpayers and control over the US Congress.

3. The deal “permanently prohibits Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon” alleges Obama.

OK, I'll give you that one:

After two years of negotiations [said the president], we have achieved a detailed arrangement that permanently prohibits Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. It cuts off all of Iran's pathways to a bomb. It contains the most comprehensive inspection and verification regime ever negotiated to monitor a nuclear program.

Not the way I use "permanent". In fact it's only for 25 years. Why didn't Obama make them sign an agreement in perpetuity? Maybe because that's stupid? (I don't offhand know of a lot of examples of in-perpetuity deals; Britain's held on to Gibraltar since 1713, but US lost the Canal Zone in 1999. A weird little argument about India's nuclear arsenal and perpetuity suggests that the Bush administration permanently fucked up the possibility in 2006.)

4. Obama said the deal “contains the most comprehensive inspection and verification regime ever negotiated to monitor a nuclear program.”

Again, what's your example of a more comprehensive inspection and verification regime?

In reality, the inspections regime is based on the assumption that Iran will comply entirely with the deal.

That is unlikely.

Again, zero. You happen to think it isn't comprehensive enough, apparently, but all you can say is that that's how you feel. And again, the point itself is absurd, since the agreement as written is full of provisions for what happens if Iran fails to comply entirely with the deal. This is not a secret.

5. “If Iran cheats, we can catch them and we will,” asserts the president ignoring decades of U.S. experience with assessing other countries’ nuclear programs wrong.

Go back to Square 4 and the most comprehensive inspection and verification ever. It was designed, contrary to the understanding of some cynics who know the US only from the Bush administration, by not ignoring decades of US experience. Although come to think of it I don't know when the IAEA inspectors have ever in fact been wrong about a nuclear weapons program. Examples? There was no inspection program when the USSR tested its first bomb in 1949, or China in 1964. Afterwards, not Israel, India, or Pakistan, which simply refused to belong to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and weren't inspected at all. Not North Korea, which threw inspectors out after George W. Bush broke our commitments with the country and little Mr. David Frum hurt their feelings.  The Americans under George W. certainly got Iraq wrong, after George W. pulled the IAEA inspectors out for not giving him the answers he wanted to hear, but in the wrong direction, believing in the existence of imaginary weapons. He wanted to hear that Saddam Hussein was working on nuclear arms, but wasn't prepared to hear the truth. If Bush had allowed the inspectors to remain he might have had a clearer idea of what was going on.

6. “For Iran to cheat, it has to build a lot more than just one building or covert facility like Fordow. It would need a secret source for every single aspect of its program. No nation in history has been able to pull off such subterfuge when subjected to such rigorous inspections.”

Is that not true?

Under the deal, Iran will be given plenty of notice to cover its nuclear weapon activities, particularly those that do not involve radioactive material.

In the past, the United States repeatedly misjudged other countries’ nuclear weapon programs: from the Soviet Union, to China, to Iraq, to Libya.

In the case of Libya, the United States did not even know the country had a nuclear program until the Libyans showed surprised Americans to their undeclared sites.

Another non sequitur. The "plenty of notice" thing is a canard, too; no, a nuclear facility is not a meth lab and you can't flush the stuff down the toilet or shove it in a closet. Libya? Maybe the Bush administration was surprised, but the Clinton administration knew all about it in 1999-2000. When they told Georgie, he must have said "OK you've covered your ass" and gone back to planning the Iraq war.

7. “An argument against sanctions relief is an argument against any diplomatic resolutions of this issue,” says the president.

When is an argument against sanctions relief not an argument against sanctions relief? When it's ajar, har har har.

The assertion is grossly misleading because the criticism has to do with how little the United States is getting from lifting sanctions on Iran, not with the diplomatic solution per se.

I think we're just about to hit bottom here. The assertion is not misleading in that sense because the United States is not lifting sanctions on Iran. The P5+1 is lifting sanctions on Iran designed to pressure the country to forever abandon the possibility of a a nuclear weapons program because the country has agreed, formally, with extreme inspection and verification procedures, to forever abandon the possibility of a nuclear weapons program.

Very onerous economic and political sanctions imposed by the United States against Iran in regard to other non-nuclear matters like Iran's support for groups that US does not like remain in place until such time as Congress is satisfied they can come off.

What the US is getting from the lifting of international sanctions is exactly what it's paying for. If it wants more, the other sanctions are there, and hopefully the next (Democratic) president will be working on it.

8. “Congressional rejection of this deal leaves any U.S. administration that is absolutely committed to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon with one option: another war in the Middle East,”says the president.

But

The choice is blatantly false.

Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs, reiterated “we have a range of options” should the deal fail, along with Admiral Richardson, the nominee to be the next Chief of Naval Operations.

In short, war would not result from the rejection of the deal.

Pal—the real fear, which Obama doesn't like to name out loud for fear of hurting people's feelings, isn't about the Joint Chiefs' options, isn't that the US will fall into war with Iran. It's that Israel will.

This is why the Gulf Arab states line up in favor of the deal, along with former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon and the 36 other Israeli former security chiefs who have so far come out. Kerry put it as clearly as indirection can, pointing at the question of what Israel will do by dancing around it, in his Atlantic interview with Jeffrey Goldberg (via Haaretz):

Kerry outlined his scenario of how U.S. rejection of the agreement would lead to war, saying it would mean “going back to a situation where you don’t know what they’re doing—you don’t have inspectors in; you have no inspections regime; you have no reduction in their stockpile; you have no requirements that they do any of that. You’re simply - quote - “relying on them being people of common sense.” You mean, all of a sudden the people you say want to destroy Israel, they’re going to become a country of common sense? I mean, how contradictory is that?”

“President Obama is not asking for war,” Kerry stressed. “He’s not saying we’re going to war. He’s saying that the unfolding of events in the absence of inspections, in the absence of a regime that requires [the Iranians] to do things, in the absence of a reduction of their stockpile, while they’re spinning centrifuges—what do you think is going to happen when you have uninspected centrifuges spinning and enrichment taking place in Iran?

“The hue and cry will be, ‘Iran is going to go to a bomb, you better drop the thing on them now to stop them.’ It’s inevitable… Iran will respond. So how many of those rockets that are going to come crashing into the straits? Will the Strait of Hormuz be closed? Will our troops in Afghanistan be attacked? Will other bases that are static in the region start – what happens?”

More than stopping Iran from constructing a nuclear weapon, which was never going to happen in any case, the job has always been to keep Israel out of trouble—out of the one war that it might really not survive.

So, tally? Eight things Obama got wrong? Not demonstrated. You've replied with four non sequiturs, three basic errors, and one actual catch, of a single injudicious adjective. Fail.

More on why opposing the Iran agreement equals favoring war, from Juan Cole.