46 Retired U.S. Generals, Admirals Press Biden to Abandon Iran Nuclear Deal
Jon DoughertyApril 15, 2022
“In Ukraine, we are bearing witness to the horrors of a country ruthlessly attacking its neighbor and, by brandishing its nuclear weapons, forcing the rest of the world largely to stand on the sidelines,” the letter, which was written in coordination with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), said.
“The new Iran deal currently being negotiated, which Russia has played a central role in crafting, will enable the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism to cast its own nuclear shadow over the Middle East,” the letter continued, according to Fox News, which was the first to report it
The network adds:
Top military officials expressed concern that the Biden administration’s determination to re-enter a nuclear deal with Tehran could weaken the U.S.’s position to hold Iran accountable.
Despite warnings from member nations like the U.K., France and Germany, the U.S. abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018 under the Trump administration over what it regarded as weak points in the deal.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), did not report that Tehran had violated the JCPOA, but Iran’s continued deployment of ballistic missiles – capable of carrying a nuclear warhead – prompted the U.S. to withdraw from the agreement.
Retired Air Force Gen. Charles Wald, a former deputy commander of U.S. European Command (EUCOM), noted that he is in support of finding a workable solution to preventing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East using diplomacy. But he did say that no deal with Iran is better than a bad one.“The idea of an agreement is a good idea. We agree with diplomacy,” Wald told Fox News. “But we agreed with a fair agreement that would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon breakout and then have weapons delivery systems that would then change the dynamic in the Middle East – particularly for Israel but all other countries too.”
Israel is not a declared nuclear power but is widely believed to possess them.
Fox News noted, “Wald said one of his chief concerns with the latest deal is that the Biden administration is not considering Iran’s role in fueling terrorism and backing rebel groups in the war in Yemen – a war that has prompted one of the greatest humanitarian crises.”
Biden, who was Obama’s vice president, made renegotiating the deal a priority during his 2020 campaign. But according to a report on Thursday, it’s not at all clear that a deal is in the works, at least as far as the Iranians are concerned — though it appears as though Tehran is set for a financial windfall of billions of dollars.
“Iran’s Foreign Ministry recently announced it expected $7 billion in frozen assets to be released to its control in the coming weeks as part of the Biden administration’s negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal,” said Thursday’s ‘Early Warning’ report by Forward Observer, a subscription-based private intelligence firm.
“Iranian officials have criticized the U.S. for its intransigence in completing the negotiations in Vienna and have themselves stated they believe the negotiations to be finished,” the report said.
An analyst comment regarding the report added: “While Iran believes they’ve reached the end of the negotiations, the U.S. is still vacillating on removing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps from its list of state-sponsored terrorism list and has yet to make statements that would confirm the conclusion of the negotiations.”
“That’s a red flag,” Wald said in reference to removing the IRGC as a designated terrorist organization. “That just doesn’t sit well with us because the IRGC is the most malicious group in the region.”
The retired general noted further that the death of at least 600 members of the U.S. military could be “directly” attributed to the IRGC, adding that the unit continues to attack U.S. and allied forces in the region.