In an exclusive interview with the JewishPress.com, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) disclosed that not only has every member of Congress who voted for the Nuclear Iran Deal never seen any of the documents containing key elements of the deal, but also that not a single document from or about those side deals is anywhere in the possession of any Americans.
This means that neither the President of the United States, nor the Secretary of State, nor any member of the U.S. negotiating team has the capacity to read any of these documents and know what they say.
It means that the United States is relying on someone else’s account of what the agreements say in order to determine whether a sufficient degree of protection is afforded the United States and its allies by this agreement.
And if the description U.S. officials have been given is wrong, the United States will not know until Iranian bombs fall.
This government is entrusting – yes, entrusting because there can be no verification of an unknown – the most murderous and voracious regime on the globe with following rules governing its nuclear activity and not even the highest levels of this administration can say exactly what those rules say.
It is staggering.
Pompeo, a Harvard Law School graduate who graduated first in his class from West Point and served in the U.S. military, along with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) discovered the existence of those secret side deals when they traveled to Vienna and met with members of the International Atomic Energy Agency in July.
Since learning about those side deals, one of which deals with Iran’s Parchin military complex and inspections of such sites and the other deals with the possible military dimensions of Iran’s previous nuclear weapons program, Pompeo has been “obsessed” with finding out the details of those deals.
When asked whether he or other members of Congress planned to subpoena the administration for the documentation surrounding those side deals, Pompeo responded: “they don’t have anything.”
“No notes? No lists? No summaries?” Pompeo was asked.
“Nothing,” he answered.
Astounding.
Pompeo told this reporter that the briefings provided by the administration to members of Congress about the side deals were provided based on recollections of what American officials were told.
Given this bizarre turn of events, opponents of the Joint Nuclear Plan of Action (which includes those invisible side deals) plan to do three things, Pompeo said.
First, they intend to vote to block the deal from going forward, as the administration is already in violation of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (Corker-Cardin), the first Article of which explicitly required the administration to provide all documentation of every part of the deal. Because the administration has failed to fulfill its obligation, the 60 day clock on the Congressional review period has not yet begun.
Second, the Congressional opponents of the JCPOA will introduce a new motion, one of approval for the JCPOA. This will require members of Congress to affirmatively vote in favor of the deal, if that is their position, despite their ignorance of key aspects of the deal.
And third, opponents of the JCPOA in Congress will move to ensure that the current sanctions on Iran are not lifted.
The revelation provided by Pompeo also brings into focus another profound problem with the Iran agreement: by its terms – that is, according to the terms we have – the agreement is inconsistent with, and purports to overrule, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement. The NNPA is a treaty, and as such, part of the Supreme Law of the Land ordained by the Constitution.
Therefore, the NNPA cannot be overruled by a mere executive agreement, which the administration has insisted is the status of the Iran deal. But if we do not actually know all of the relevant terms to which the United States has acceded, and which will govern the parts of the agreement we can see, it is even more clearly impossible for anyone to determine the extent to which this set of agreements contravenes the NNPA.