Republican critics have just acquired a whole new round of ammunition to use against Obama’s controversial deal with Iran. After a report on Wednesday revealed that Iran will be allowed to conduct inspections of its own nuclear sites, former CIA Intel Officer Joshua Katz told Fox News that funding for those inspections will come from U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Katz broke the disheartening news Tuesday on Fox News: “The American taxpayer has been set up to fail by this administration,” said Katz. “I don’t think anyone had a belief that this deal with Iran was set up for success. But now we’re seeing that the United States is going to pay the lion’s share for monitoring and the deal doesn’t even include Iran actually opening its doors.”
The question of how the IAEA will effectively monitor Iran’s nuclear activity has so far been the biggest issue of the controversial deal – not to mention the fact that inspections could be delayed by a month or more.
The IAEA says it needs more than $10 million a year to monitor Iran.
“That’s our money,” said Fox News host Stuart Varney. “We contribute the lion’s share to this watchdog, so we got to pay.”
Varney asked Katz if taxpayer money would be going “directly to the Iranians,” to which Katz responded, “It’s actually going to a state sponsor of terror!”
Thanks to a secret side deal between Iran and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), Iran will be allowed to conduct its own inspections. Trusting Iran to monitor itself is “remarkably naïve,” in the words of Senator John Cornyn (R-TX).
Ed Royce of the House Foreign Affairs Committee put it plainly: “International inspections should be done by international inspectors. Period.”
GOP candidate Jeb Bush spoke out against this newest atrocity regarding the controversial deal, calling the deal a “farce” and declaring, “nuclear inspections of state sponsors of terrorism can’t work on the honor system.”
Lawmakers will vote next month to approve or disapprove the deal. So far, only two democratic senators have agreed to vote no. In order to override Obama’s almost certain veto, Republicans will need at least a total of thirteen.