Things got pretty heated on Thursday between the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which now Secretary of State John Kerry used to chair himself, and Kerry, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. Even the Democrats don’t seem to be sold on this whole deal.

Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), who is the current Chair of the committee, told Kerry, “Not unlike a hotel guest that leaves only with a hotel bathrobe on his back, I believe you’ve been fleeced.” He later tried to soften that statement a bit on social media, by taking the “you” out and saying, “We’ve been fleeced.”

After that statement, Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-Maryland), the ranking Democrat on the committee, asked senators to leave out their emotions when debating this. Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho) agreed, saying, “This should be done in a non-emotional way. But, that doesn’t mean we gotta leave common sense out of this, with all due respect.”

He later stated, “Anyone who believes this is a good deal really joins the ranks of the most naive people on the face of the Earth,” and followed up with “you guys have been bamboozled, and the American people are going to pay for it.”

This sent Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) into a tailspin, naming other countries who participated in the negotiations and signed off on the deal and saying, “So my colleagues think that you were fleeced, that you were bamboozled, that means everybody was fleeced and bamboozled, everybody, almost everybody in the world?”

Following that scolding from Boxer, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida), who is a candidate in the 2016 presidential primaries, said, “I hope the next president is somebody that will remove the national security waiver and re-impose the congressional sanctions passed by Congress, because this deal is fundamentally and irrevocably flawed.”

Kerry and Rubio seemed to spar a bit after this, with Kerry saying, “You know, I have listed to a long list of your objections here about it, but there is no alternative that you or anybody else has proposed…”

Rubio cut him off here by saying, “I sure have, Secretary Kerry!”

I especially enjoyed, and was impressed by, Rubio’s line of questioning to Kerry. Mostly because he brought up many of the questions and misgivings I have personally had about this deal, especially the fact that we are dealing with an evil nation who lies and cheats.

Despite their bluster and maneuvering at the United Nations, the Obama Administration admitted today what we already knew: the next president is under no legal or moral obligation to keep this flawed deal. This is President Obama’s deal with Iran, and our allies and adversaries alike should take careful notice about Secretary Kerry’s acknowledgment today about the limits of the agreement, the fact that neither the American people nor their elected representatives in Congress support this deal, and that if the next president returns America to its rightful indispensable role in the world, Iran will be dealt with quite differently than it has been during the Obama Administration.

This should have a chilling effect for any business thinking about investing in Iran and setting up operations there. This deal will not outlive this administration, and international businesses that move in to Iran in the coming months need to know they will lose everything if the next president chooses not to continue granting Iran the national security waiver this president is pursuing, or if Iran once again fails to keep its promises.

Today’s hearing also raises more questions about whether the American people and the world are supposed to believe the Obama Administration’s assurances on key aspects of the deal, or if we’re supposed to believe the actual text of the nuclear agreement. The agreement states very clearly that the U.S. would be obligated to help Iran against future efforts to sabotage its nuclear program, but Secretary Kerry said today that is absolutely not the case.

Iran is led by an evil regime that has never lived up to its previous international agreements, is currently involved in sponsoring terrorism and remains unrepentant in its desire to destroy the United States and Israel. Instead of legitimizing them and rewarding them as President Obama has done, we should be standing with our allies in opposition to Iran in word and deed.

The hearing was quite a sight to watch and I was left wondering what kind of three stooges show the President’s cabinet was having up there. I’m sorry, but I was left less than impressed by Kerry, Lew and Moniz. They all seemed utterly clueless, but at least Kerry was trying. The other two? I have no idea how in the world they ever got appointed to such high offices.

You can also watch the full hearing here.

What was even more interesting was the way the main stream media covered the hearings, later that day. ABC, NBC and the Spanish-language networks, Telemundo, Univision and MundoFox, all skipped the testimony from Kerry on the Iran deal, and CBS covered it in a short news brief and totally ignored false statements made by Kerry, who faced criticism by Senators on both sides of the aisle.

In the hearings, Kerry said that “nobody has ever talked about actually dismantling their entire program,” however he told Congress on December 10, 2013 that the State Department engaged the Iranian regime “because we know that it would hopefully help Iran dismantle it’s nuclear program.”

Kerry also suggested, as he has before, that inaction by the Bush administration tied Obama’s hands, however the International Atomic Energy Agency reports show that 75 percent of Iran’s centrifuges were installed under President Obama’s watch!

And, Kerry said on Thursday, that the administration “never uttered the words ‘anywhere, anytime’ nor was it ever part of the discussion that we had with the Iranians.” However, on April 6, White House adviser Ben Rhodes told CNN’s Jack Tapper, “Under this deal, you will have anywhere, anytime, 24/7 access as it relates to the nuclear facilities that Iran has.”

There was no mention of any of this on most news channels, and in the brief story on CBS the focus was more of a teaser for Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio’s upcoming appearance on Friday’s CBS This Morning, than an actual report on the hearings.

Photo credit: denishiza / Pixabay (Creative Commons CC0)

I am left twisting in the wind here with just what the Obama administration got out of this Iranian nuclear deal and why they think it is such a success. We certainly didn’t get our American prisoners held in Iran back.

But, what we did get was Iran screaming “death to America” at the top of their lungs, not just before, but also after the deal was done, and a befuddled John Kerry not sure what to make of it. Come on? Does the Obama administration even have two measly brain cells to rub together anymore?

On Friday, Iranian cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani, who was handpicked by the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader to deliver the prayers, the first since a final nuclear deal was struck with Iran and world powers in Vienna, said, “We will trample upon America.”

As he was delivering his statements a Persian-language message on the podium declared, “We will trample upon America,” while the English phrase “We Defeat the United States” can be seen underneath.

Friday prayers are officially sanctioned by the state and a sign of the Supreme Leader’s thinking on various issues.

On Saturday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, making his first public speech since the deal was made, said this deal won’t change his country’s policy towards the “arrogant” United States.

Saturday’s speech was given to a large crowd in Tehran, marking the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan. It stressed that Iran will not stop supporting its allies in the Middle East, including the Syrian government, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Palestinian resistance group. While America classified the Lebanese Hezbollah as a terrorist group, Iran calls it an ally.

Iran also continues to call for the destruction of Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of course, opposed the deal. And rightfully so. He said it was “a bad mistake of historic proportions.”

He went on to say this gives Iran a clear path to nuclear weapons, as many of the restrictions that were imposed upon them are now being lifted and they are getting a huge jackpot of cash. My guess is, he is right on the money with this one. It doesn’t take someone with a degree in rocket science (no pun intended) to figure this out!

So, what do we have? We have U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry “troubled” over the remarks coming out of Iran.

Really? Really?

“I don’t know how to interpret it at this point in time, except to take it at face value, that that’s his policy,” Kerry said in an interview with Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television.

He went on the say, “But I do know that often comments are made publicly and things can evolve that are different. If it is the policy, it’s very disturbing, it’s very troubling.”

This deal has been a farce since its inception. The deal will allow Iran to keep its core nuclear structure in place, while receiving billions of dollars in economic sanctions relief.

It has a dramatic rollback of all “nuclear related” sanctions, no matter who imposed them — the U.S., the European Union or the United Nations. This means all energy, financial, transportation and trade sanctions. It also includes a page after page list of names of people and companies whose assets will be “unfrozen.” No chance of those “assets” being used for nefarious purposes when this happens, huh?

It also prohibits sanctions from being reintroduced or reimposed. Seriously? Who wrote this deal, the Iranians themselves? Did no one who has a brain have input in this process?

Does this mean in cases of terrorism and human rights violations we can no longer impose sanctions? According to some, it appears that the U.S. didn’t make clear enough its intent to preserve sanctions for these type of scenarios that are non-nuclear related.

So, does Iran now feel they have a free ticket to do whatever they want to do without fear of sanctions? Some critics of the agreement feel they can interpret it that way.

It also lifts bans on Iran’s ballistic missile program and restrictions on its ability to purchase conventional military arms on the open market.

Some additional highlights of this bad deal, as reported in Business Insider include:

When will inspectors get into suspect sites? According to my read of the agreement, Iran has a total of 24 days to delay any set of inspections. While it may take more than 24 days to scrub clean a massive underground enrichment facility, there is a lot of illicit activity that Iran can hide with 24 days notice.

What are the consequences for Iranian violations? According to my read of the agreement, there is only one penalty for any infraction, big or small — taking Iran to the UN Security Council for the “snapback” of international sanctions. That is like saying that for any crime — whether a misdemeanor or a felony — the punishment is the death penalty. In the real world, that means there will be no punishments for anything less than a capital crime.

What does “snapback” mean in practice? Let’s say that the UN Security Council does order the reimposition of sanctions. According to my read of the agreement, all contracts signed by Iran up until that point are grandfathered in and immune from sanctions. That means one can expect a stampede of state-to-state and private sector contracts — some real, many hypothetical — all designed to shield Iran from the impact of possible reimposition of sanctions, thereby weakening the impact of the punishment.

But the problem with snapback gets worse. The agreement includes a statement that Iran considers a reimposition of sanctions as freeing it from all commitments and restrictions under the deal. In other words, the violation would have to be really big for the Security Council to blow up the agreement and reimpose sanctions. That effectively gives Iran a free pass on all manner of small to mid-level violations.

According to Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan, the deal will also prohibit all foreigners from inspecting Iran’s “defensive and missile capabilities” at sensitive military sites. What the… ?!?

He went on to say that U.S. officials are being deceptive when they claim that international inspectors will have full access to Iran’s key military sites.

Dehqan was quoted as saying, “The U.S. officials make boastful remarks and imagine that they can impose anything on the Iranian nation because they lack a proper knowledge of the Iranian nation.”

He went on to say that Americans must “realize that they are not the world’s super power and no one recognizes them as such any longer.”

A former Pentagon advisor said that these remarks are meant to mock the Obama administration. He say that Iran’s Supreme Leader is “toying with Obama right now, humiliating him, but Obama is too self-absorbed to realize it.”

He also went on to say that there is a reason why Obama doesn’t want Congress to see the agreement. “That is because to examine the agreement is to recognize that it’s more an unconditional surrender than an arms control agreement.”