Letter To The Editor: Recognize Continuing Dangers Of Iran Nuclear Deal

UANI Outreach Director Bob Feferman & UANI Executive Director Matan Shamir: "In his recent column (“How Bibi Played Us On The Iran Deal — And We Let Him”) Peter Beinart claims Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu duped us by hyping the threat posed by the Iran nuclear deal. But who does Beinart mean by “us”? It doesn’t take a Bibi Netanyahu to recognize the dangers the accord poses to Israel and American interests, something Beinart is somehow not even willing to concede. So let “us” review. First, for the positive. In the short term, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the deal is formally known, constrains Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon by limiting it to a few hundred kilograms of low-enriched uranium and reducing its output of weapon-grade plutonium at its heavy-water reactor. Iran’s declared nuclear facilities are also placed under a more rigorous inspection and verification regime. However, in the short term, the JCPOA also has empowered the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism by lifting the most onerous sanctions upon Tehran and releasing tens of billions of dollars in frozen assets into the regime’s coffers. A revitalized Iran has utilized its resurgent power to further its designs for regional dominance and its ongoing aggression in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, as well as against Israel. Tehran is now also brazenly testing long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads and threatening U.S. naval vessels in the Persian Gulf, having notoriously detained 10 American sailors at gunpoint last year in violation of international law."