And so it begins. Barack Obama’s infamous dance with the devil is scarcely a day old and already the administration is walking back claims made as recently as April about what would constitute a deal breaker.
In an appearance yesterday on CNN’s “OutFront,” Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, was asked about “anytime/anywhere inspections.” Host Erin Burnett played a clip of of Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, one of the deal’s fiercest critics from the president’s own party, who said, “The deal doesn’t provide for anytime/anywhere inspections, which I thought was a red line.”
Rhodes reacted by insisting, “We never sought anytime/anywhere inspections.” You can view the exchange here, beginning at 1:20.
You can also view another clip of Rhodes from an earlier CNN interview, this time with Jake Tapper. The transcript follows:
TAPPER: So the Israelis have put out this list of things that they think should be in the final deal with Iran, including allowing inspectors to go anywhere anytime. That seems perfectly reasonable, no?
RHODES: Well, Jake, first of all, under this deal, you will have anytime, anywhere access as it relates to the nuclear facilities that Iran has.
TAPPER: What about the military facilities?
RHODES: So what you’ll have under this deal, Jake, is the strongest inspections regime that any country faces in the world. And what that means is, if we see a site that we need to inspect on a military facility, we can get access to that site and inspect it. So if it’s a suspicious site and that we believe is related to its nuclear efforts, we can get access through the IAEA. [Emphasis added]
Another unnamed administration official told the Jerusalem Post that such “snap inspections” were “just not something that happens anywhere in the world.”
Sadly, that statement is as true today as it was before Team Obama shook with the Iranis.
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