August 4, 2015
By Andrew D Lappin
Announcing his decision to support the Iran nuclear deal, Congressman Adam Schiff (D –CA) simultaneously declared his intensely personal concern for the issue of Israel’s security.
We know that the deal is not good for Israel because the Israeli Cabinet has flat out said so unanimously. A recent poll taken of Jewish Israeli citizens shows that 78% believe that the deal will endanger their lives. What unique insight or heretofore unannounced facts that other members of the House Intelligence Committee have yet to have been made aware of, equip Schiff to override the judgement of those officials of the Israeli government charged with the ominous burden of protecting the lives of Israeli citizens and the sovereignty of Israeli soil?
Schiff’s inappropriate invalidation of the judgement of Israeli defense and intelligence analysts is no small misstep. It is secondary however to what amounts to the abrogation of his sworn duty as a member of the House Intelligence Committee. I understand that this exclamation may appear dramatic and overdone but for the fact that the math involved with this decision, as it concerns the calculation of potential downside versus upside of the agreement is so blatantly lopsided to the downside. How could it possibly be that Schiff or any member who has been deemed qualified to sit on the Intelligence Committee, who has looked at reams of data on this issue and in particular on the track record of Iranian transgressions, could possibly have found that “single needle of good” residing within this “haystack of overwhelmingly bad choices”.
As we continue to travel through the realm of “Hope and Change”, he clings with muted optimism to the slim chance that we might be able to monitor and respond to Iranian breaches. Not only has this presumption of a meaningful response been factually disqualified, but we will not even have quantifiable benchmarks with which to prove Iranian malfeasance. There is no strategically sound reason to take a bad deal, nor to make a bad deal even worse by monetarily enhancing our sworn adversary.
But the deal does not have to go badly in a nuclear sense to begin to complicate our lives. In that Iran, a terrorist police state, will remain accountable to no other nation, the vast economic windfall realized as a signing bonus as part of the agreement will without question find its way to the on-going torrent of terrorist pursuits and regional conflicts in which Iran is engaged. It is discomforting that a person with Representative Schiff’s awesome responsibility is not capable of deciphering tin trinkets from real nuggets.
Perhaps his calculations are more closely tracking the “informed” preference of his Hollywood benefactors.