By Steve Levy
There have been a plethora of comments on Trump‘s memorandum of understanding with Iran.
Some love the idea of us getting out of the strait and having our oil prices lowered. Others see it as a big disappointment — a giveaway of billions of dollars to Iran with the unlikelihood that they’ll follow up in a positive way.
Well, after all the talk, and all the debate, and all the rummaging through the language, this deal comes down to these simple things:
When will we be able to remove the nuclear dust and at what point does Iran get its first dime of money from either the U.S. or the Arab allies?
This is the bottom line: If we actually are able to remove that nuclear dust and prevent Iran from having a nuclear program with centrifuges to create the material for a future bomb before money goes to the Iranian mullahs, then that is indeed a victory for the United States and the Western world.
On the other hand, if Iran starts to get billions of dollars before they hand over the nuclear dust, they will have won. If they get the money in hand, they will likely fail to relinquish the nuclear dust after the fact.
They will be in the same position they were before our actions against Iran, except that they’ll be now infinitely richer. Surely, we can re-engage in military conflict at that point, but it will be against a much wealthier, more stable Iran that has built back its conventional forces.
We need to know these dates. They are everything regarding this deal. And yet we don’t see any dates. So how can we know whether this is a good deal or not?
It would be malpractice for us to allow money to flow to Iran before we get that nuclear dust.
Anything other than that is a warmed over version of the disastrous Obama plan.