On Wednesday, The New York Times published an op-ed by former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, famed for her lies about the sordid cover-up of the Benghazi massacre, in which she attacks President Trump for leaving the Iran nuclear deal, concluding that Trump is “our wrecking ball in chief.”
Rice, who lies the way others breathe, continues her mendacious behavior in the op-ed. Early in the op-ed, she pontificates:
The Iran deal has worked as intended. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United States intelligence community, the United Nations Security Council and the president’s top advisers, Iran has fully complied with its obligations. As required, Iran relinquished 97 percent of its enriched uranium stockpile, dismantled two-thirds of its centrifuges and its entire plutonium facility, abided by the most intrusive international inspection and monitoring regime in history, and forswore ever producing a nuclear weapon.
The most intrusive international inspection and monitoring regime in history? What planet is she living on?
As Fred Fleitz noted in National Review, Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR), Ted Cruz (R-TX), David Perdue (R-GA), and Marco Rubio (R-FL) wrote to then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in July 2017 that there were four ways Iran was violating the nuclear deal: Operating more advanced uranium-enrichment centrifuges than is permitted and announcing the capability to initiate mass production of centrifuges; exceeding limits on production and storage of heavy water, a substance needed to operate plutonium-producing heavy-water nuclear reactors, and covertly procuring nuclear and missile technology outside of JCPOA-approved channels; refusing to allow IAEA inspectors access to nuclear-research and military facilities.
Rice blathers, “Now President Trump has ceded the moral high ground and freed Iran from all those constraints. Iran will be able to resume its nuclear activities without being blamed for violating the agreement.”
As if Iran has not been violating the agreement already.
Then Rice conflates her former boss with the United States of America, writing, “Instead, it is the United States that is about to unilaterally violate the very agreement it negotiated by reimposing nuclear-related sanctions while Iran remains in compliance.”
It wasn’t the United States that agreed to the deal; it was Obama personally. As noted at The Daily Wire, “ … the deal was not between the United States and Iran – it was between Obama and Iran. The U.S. Senate didn’t sign off on the deal, so it wasn’t a treaty. It was merely an Obama administration policy, easily tossed out by the next president.”
Rice writes, “The costs to American global leadership are steep. When the United States unilaterally abrogates an international agreement in the absence of any breach, we undermine international perceptions of our reliability and responsibility.”
Again Rice iterates that the deal was done by the United States, not her boss. And the fact that the U.S. doesn’t want to have a deal with a lying, corrupt regime enhances our “reliability and responsibility.”
Rice continues, “With Iran unconstrained, Saudi Arabia and others in the region may push to obtain a nuclear capacity. The hard-liners in Iran who never liked the nuclear deal will be strengthened in their bid to destabilize the region, leaving relative moderates like President Hassan Rouhani sidelined.”
Rouhani a moderate. That falsehood has been promulgated by the MSM and the Obama Administration for years; it is debunked here, here, and here.
Then Rice gets personal: “The president spiked the Iran deal out of spite and hubris, with no viable alternative. … He has provided proximate proof that any deal the United States makes, even a successful one, may be tossed aside on the whim of this or any other president.”
Oh, so Obama’s deal with Iran wasn’t a “whim”?
Rice concludes with a savage attack:
The president has just made the most foolish and consequential national security decision of his tenure. Exactly what comes next is unclear, but we certainly will face a far worse situation than today. When the mess materializes, Mr. Trump, per standard procedure, will blame everyone else: his political opponents, his predecessor, the Europeans and the Iranians. But there will be only one person responsible: President Trump, our wrecking ball in chief.