If generals feel confident the Iran Agreement is worthy of the time spent to achieve it; then leave it alone. Israel appreciates the fact Iran cannot escalate any nuclear program.
Iran has other problems, in that it acts as an influence in Syria, Lebanon with Hezbollah and Yemen. If further sanctions belong anywhere it is to stem the expansionist ambitions of Iran.
Nuclear weapons are not conducive to expansionism as it scars the land and makes it useless.
April 26, 2018
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph F. Dunford Jr. (L) and US Secretary of Defense James Mattis talk before a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill April 26, 2018
Iran has other problems, in that it acts as an influence in Syria, Lebanon with Hezbollah and Yemen. If further sanctions belong anywhere it is to stem the expansionist ambitions of Iran.
Nuclear weapons are not conducive to expansionism as it scars the land and makes it useless.
April 26, 2018Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph F. Dunford Jr. (L) and US Secretary of Defense James Mattis talk before a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill April 26, 2018
Without explicitly giving his opinion about whether the United States should stick with the agreement, Mattis said that after reading the full text of the deal three times, he was struck by provisions that allow for international verification of Iran’scompliance. He said that since becoming defense secretary in January 2017, he also has read what he called a classified protocol in the agreement.
“I will say it is written almost with an assumption that Iran would try to cheat,” he said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “So the verification, what is in there, is actually pretty robust as far as our intrusive ability to get in” with representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency to check on compliance.
“Whether that is sufficient I think is a valid question,” he said after Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said the nuclear deal was not supported by the Congress. The committee’s senior Democrat, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, told Mattis the Iran deal is “working as intended” and that withdrawing would ease Iran’s path to nuclear weapons.
Mattis said Iran’s history of hiding a nuclear weapons program makes it “suspect,” and he noted his concern about other Iranian activities, including its role in supporting Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, and supplying its proxy forces in Yemen....
