Last week, Vice President Joseph Biden and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew explained how the Obama administration intends to roll back sanctions against Iran if a nuclear deal is finalized. Although their remarks were meant to assuage critics—Lew confidently claimed that Iran is unlikely to use its new income to fund terror or war—they accomplished the opposite, as Josh Rogin writes:
“It’s true that Iran could try to cheat, whether there’s a deal or not,” [Biden] said. “Now they didn’t cheat under the interim deal—the Joint Plan of Action—as many were certain they would.”
That record of good behavior is debatable. Iran stands accused of violating the interim deal in a number of ways, and also reportedly violated other parts of the existing sanctions regime, including by expanding an illicit nuclear procurement network that operates through two blacklisted firms. . . .
The speeches by Lew and Biden constituted the administration’s most assertive effort to date to detail their thinking about how sanctions will be lifted. The two officials seemed to be eager to get ahead of any and all of the criticisms they are anticipating. But they did not. Unless the nuclear talks shift significantly before the June 30 deadline, the administration will continue to face questions it can’t answer.
Read more on Bloomberg: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-04/on-iran-sanctions-obama-s-new-answers-fall-flat