“I understand the Iranians are walking around very satisfied in Geneva, as well they should because they got everything and paid nothing,” Benjamin Netanyahu said last week, in describing the “very, very bad deal” that the world was about to accept on Iran’s nuclear program. Israel has long been opposed to any deal that allows Iran to enrich any uranium, but the deal on the table in Geneva was even worse than that in its lopsided terms.
Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) is almost universally acknowledged as Capitol Hill’s leader on issues pertaining to Iran sanctions. His office produced a slide that summarizes the proposed Iran nuclear deal that the White House was ready to sign but which France rejected. As Kirk notes, the Obama administration was ready to sign off on a deal that would have lifted many sanctions while leaving Iran on the verge of becoming a nuclear power.
The negotiations resume next week, on Nov. 20. In that time the U.S. will have a chance to re-consider. If “no deal” is better than a bad deal, as Secretary of State John Kerry once said, they have to be willing to walk away, which means a new round of sanctions that Congress has been considering would go forward. Until Iran is prepared to acknowledge that its “right” to enrich uranium is anything but, progress will be impossible.
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