Washington is a notoriously self-absorbed place. When it comes to Iran and the Iran deal, much of the attention the last couple days has been taken up by revelations that the White House spun, misled, or outright lied about the nature of its diplomacy and the Iran deal. This isn’t news to readers of COMMENTARY, nor is it a surprise. Earlier this year, I published a lengthy article in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence outlining how almost every administration since Lyndon Johnson’s has either twisted intelligence to support diplomatic outreach or faced career bureaucrats doing so in order to constrain the president’s policy options.
What should be a far greater story is the uncertainty and contradiction between the State Department and the Pentagon about whether or not Iran conducted a new round of ballistic missile tests and, if so, when. The story began when Iranian military officials announced new tests before others retracted the announcement.
The Pentagon confirmed the test. The State Department said it could not confirm the test, which it said might have actually occurred two weeks ago. White House, for its part, said it would seek to figure out what happened. According to the Wall Street Journal, “White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that the administration is aware of statements by Iranian officials indicating a missile test didn’t occur. ‘We’re still trying to get to the bottom of what exactly transpired,’ Mr. Earnest said.”
Let’s consider what this means: If the test actually occurred two weeks ago and the State Department knew about it, then Secretary of State John Kerry was purposely suppressing the intelligence while he lobbied to give Iran more money, more business, and more access to dollars. Conversely, if the U.S. government isn’t sure when or if the test occurred, how does that give confidence that it is able to monitor what Iran is actually doing with its military. If the U.S. can’t detect a missile launch, how might it detect Iranian cheating on its nuclear accord?
Alas, the deal that Kerry negotiated and Democrats in Congress allowed to pass is nothing short of a strategic surrender. It does not make the United States safer; rather, it simply normalizes Iran’s military ambition without so much as an effective ability to monitor. Alas, the more the reality of the deal is exposed, the more it becomes clear that it was a deal based on the ambition of Obama, Kerry, and their chief aides and one divorced from any concern about the national security of the United States or its allies.