"In effect, the last president handed the Iranians a loaded gun to be pointed at his successor."

Lee Smith writes in part in Tablet,

...Democrats are not pro-terrorist. They’re simply intent on protecting the historic agreement that legalized the nuclear weapons program of a terror state.

...Democratic leadership is angry it wasn’t briefed before the operation, as were some Republican lawmakers critical of the scant information in the White House intelligence briefing on the attack. But there is reason to believe senior Democrats would have leaked it to the press, as they’ve done repeatedly over the last three years to prosecute their anti-Trump campaign. In particular, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff and his staff have used CNN as a platform to push the discredited Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Why would Democrats endanger U.S. national security by leaking highly classified plans of a major operation against a terror leader? Because Soleimani was the centerpiece of the nuclear deal.

...JCPOA advocates claim Trump left the U.S. and the entire world vulnerable by leaving the Iran deal. The JCPOA, they say, was working. This is not true and hasn’t been true since the very beginning of the deal, at least not on the terms sold to Congress and the U.S. public. From the start, Iran was given secret loopholes that made it appear they were meeting the publicly stated terms of deal. Among other recent violations: The Iranians have exceeded the amount of uranium they’re allowed to enrich; they’ve exceeded the levels of purity of enriched uranium; they’ve violated the types of centrifuges they were allowed to spin; and injected uranium into centrifuges they were not allowed to use for enrichment.

Perhaps most tellingly, Iran’s nuclear archives, which Israel seized from a Tehran warehouse in January 2018 and made public months later, show that the regime never gave up its intentions to build a military nuclear program, despite promises in the JCPOA to never pursue nuclear weapons.

...The point of the deal was not to stop Iran from ever building a bomb but to prevent the Iranians from doing so until Obama left office.

The Obama administration went to extravagant lengths to hide the obvious, hidden in plain sight. It’s all spelled out in the JCPOA’s so-called “sunset” clauses, the restrictions on the nuclear program that were designed to evaporate after Obama moved into private life.

In 2023, the U.N. ban on assistance to Iran’s ballistic missile program will end. The ban on the manufacture of advanced centrifuges will begin to expire, shortening the amount of time it will take to build a bomb. Perhaps most importantly, in 2025, the U.N. snapback mechanism allowing the U.S. to reimpose sanctions will expire, meaning that we would need to persuade Russia and China to restore international sanctions on Iran. The effect is that there is nothing short of military action to stop the Iranians from marching toward the bomb. It was Obama who said that by years 13, 14, or 15 of the deal Iran would be within a hairbreadth of a nuclear bomb By 2031 with all nuclear restrictions lifted, the Islamic Republic will have a full-scale nuclear weapons program.

The administration argued that the U.S. had to pay the ransom in cash because Tehran had been cut off from the financial system and there was no other way to transfer the funds. That was not true. The Obama administration had wired payments to Iran before and after the wooden pallets episode. The Iranians wanted cash so it would be harder to track their terror financing.

...The Obama administration even paid the Iranians when they violated the deal. The Iranians overproduced reactor coolant, (heavy water, a key ingredient in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons) in violation of the JCPOA, and the administration offered to buy it for $10 million to keep them in compliance. But that wasn’t enough for Tehran—or the White House. In exchange for giving up the nuclear-related material they had promised not to have in the first place—the heavy water—the regime then demanded more nuclear material in exchange. And the American administration agreed: In January 2017, Obama greenlighted the shipment of 130 tons of uranium to Iran.

If this all seems unbelievable, it’s because it is—and also because you’re probably still imagining that Obama’s goal was to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. But once you understand the real purpose, these moves become much clearer. To wit: Why did Obama give the regime enough uranium to make 10 nuclear bombs? To pressure the incoming Trump administration to stick with the nuclear deal. If Trump chose to leave the JCPOA, he’d have to deal with the fact that with 130 tons of uranium already on hand Iran had an easier path to the bomb. In effect, the last president handed the Iranians a loaded gun to be pointed at his successor.

Read more here.