Another Democratic Representative Opposes The Iran Deal

 
Carolyn Maloney, New York Representative, Will Oppose Iran Nuclear Deal

By ALEXANDER BURNS
AUGUST 27, 2015

Representative Carolyn B. Maloney said on Thursday that she would vote against President Obama’s proposed nuclear deal with Iran, joining Senator Chuck Schumer and other New York Democrats in opposing the White House’s top diplomatic priority.

Ms. Maloney, a Democrat who represents the East Side of Manhattan and parts of Queens and Brooklyn, said in a statement that the agreement would not provide adequate oversight of Iran’s atomic facilities, or prevent the country from seeking nuclear arms over time.

“This is an agreement with a nation that has not honored its nonproliferation commitments in the past,” Ms. Maloney said, while warning that the deal “could also make the region even more dangerous by giving Iran access to financial resources, weapons and power.”

Ms. Maloney’s announcement helps solidify the New York congressional delegation’s status as a key front in the opposition to the deal, which would lift economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for its government taking steps to rein in its nuclear program.

Opposition to the deal has been intense within New York’s large Jewish community, because of fears about the potential threat that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to Israel.

Several senior Jewish Democrats from downstate have come out against the agreement in recent weeks, including Mr. Schumer and Representatives Eliot L. Engel, Nita M. Lowey and Steve Israel. Democratic Representatives Grace Meng of Queens and Kathleen Rice of Long Island have also stated their opposition.

Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, is the state’s lone Jewish member of Congress to express support for the agreement. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, an upstate Democrat, has also endorsed it.

A sizable group of Democratic lawmakers from New York City have yet to take a position, with some openly agonizing over a vote that would have them either anger a large group of constituents or undercut Mr. Obama and his foreign policy legacy.

Congress is to vote next month on a measure expressing disapproval of the deal. Lawmakers and advocates seeking to derail the agreement are believed to face long odds: Even if they pass the resolution opposing the pact, they would still need to override a veto by Mr. Obama to halt it from taking effect.

Ms. Maloney, in her statement, endorsed several of the arguments that the agreement’s opponents have made most insistently: that Iran cannot be trusted to bargain in good faith; that it is determined to harm the United States; and that lifting sanctions would give Iran billions of dollars that it could direct toward terrorism.

Ms. Maloney called it implausible to imagine that “a portion of that massive windfall would not find its way into the hands of terrorists.”

She also warned that supporters of the deal were overly optimistic in hoping that the Iranian government was poised for major change.

“Some believe that if we can just delay Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, a more moderate regime in a country with a young population will assume power and abandon Iran’s nuclear ambitions,” she said. “We can hope for the best, but we need an agreement that assumes the worst.”

Even Congress Knows Iran Is Playing Games

353 US Reps to Kerry: Iran ‘Stonewalling’ on Nuke Detonator

Stunning bipartisan congressional letter focuses on Iran’s ‘refusal to fully cooperate’ with IAEA over Parchin.

Khan Diagram on Neutron Initiators

In a stunning bi-partisan “Congressional Letter” from over 353 out of 435 U.S. congresspersons to US Secretary of State John Kerry, the 353 U.S. representatives issued a stark warning that, “As you wrote in the Washington Post earlier this summer, if Iran’s nuclear program is truly peaceful, “it’s not a hard proposition to prove. The only reasonable conclusion for its stonewalling of international investigators is that Tehran does indeed have much to hide.”

The Congressional Letter’s signatories included almost all of both parties’ leaderships, and was greatly aided by Republican Congressman Peter J. Roskam (R-IL-06) of Illinois, a stalwart, and tireless, advocate of Israel as a vital strategic asset of the United States.

In a June 30, 2014, Washington Post opinion-piece entitled “Iranian nuclear deal still is possible, but time is running out,” Secretary Kerry had exhorted Iran to prove it “nuclear program is truly peaceful.”

The Congressional Letter, dated October 1, 2014, focused on Iran’s “refusal to fully cooperate” with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) concerning the “possible military dimensions” of Iran’s program first outlined by the IAEA in November 2011. The Congressional Letter to Sec. Kerry also stated, “As you know, the IAEA has sought information on the ‘potential military dimensions’ of the Iranian nuclear program, in particular information about Iran’s extensive research and development of a nuclear explosive device.”

This Congressional warning follows a similar warning from Israel Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, who issued a statement last week that emphasized that “credible sources” alleged that “internal neutron sources such as uranium were used in nuclear implosion tests at [Iran’s] Parchin.”

Steinitz’ Iranian “nuclear detonator” allegations center on the fact that Iran, after close to three years, has failed to explain to the IAEA allegations in the IAEA’s November 2011 report annex, which stated in paragraph 55 that the IAEA “has information from a Member State [likely Pakistan – ML] that Iran has undertaken work to manufacture small capsules suitable as containers of a component containing nuclear material”, and that “Iran may also have experimented with such components in order to assess their performance in generating neutrons.”

Such a device for “generating neutrons” is called a “neutron initiator” (See A.Q. Khan graphic immediately above). Neutron initiators are one of the key components to an “implosion” type of nuclear bombs. Implosion nuclear bombs can use as their bomb “core” either highly-enriched Uranium (U235), or weapons’ grade plutonium.

As is illustrated by A. Q. Khan, the “godfather of the Pakistani nuclear-bomb,” “Neutron initiators” act like “lighter fluid” to an implosion nuclear-bomb nuclear-core, and set off the first burst of the implosion nuclear chain-reaction.

Iran’s alleged testing of such a “nuclear initiators” has been unexplained by Iran to date. Heightening fears that such Iranian testing would prove Iran’s nuclear weapons’ intentions is the fact that “neutron initiators” have no dual purpose. This means there is no “civilian” non-weapons’ purpose to “neutron initiators” which could help Iran explain away Iran’s testing of such a device. Since, there is other non-nuclear dual use, the sole purpose of testing such a neutron initiator would be for the constructing and/or designing of a nuclear bomb.

As for the 353 U.S. Representatives’ immediate concerns, their letter closed ominously by stating:
“As you have written, there is a ‘discrepancy…between Iran’s professed intent with respect to its nuclear program and the actual content of that program to date.’ We agree with your assessment that “these issues cannot be dismissed; they must be addressed by the Iranians if a comprehensive solution is to be reached.”