Opinion Pieces

By Gwen Moore
Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel

As one of the most significant foreign policy decisions of our time, the urgency of the Iran nuclear deal demands balanced consideration and sensible reflection from Congress. Sadly, some of the agreement's opponents have no interest in a thoughtful debate. Their objective is clear: defeat the deal by arousing fear.

The historic nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 is an important achievement for international diplomacy and U.S.-Iran relations. Secretary of State John Kerry and his team were successful in negotiating an accord that verifiably prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon through a series of vigorous and unprecedented transparency measures.

The agreement is by no means perfect, but I support it because it's the only thing standing in the way of Iran developing a nuclear weapon. However, this reality appears to be lost on critics such as Gov. Scott Walker who insist the U.S. reject the accord for something better. Even before the agreement had been finalized, Walker pledged to dismantle it. "If I am your president, I will terminate the deal with Iran on the very first day in office, " said Walker.

This line of thinking illustrates the wildly mistaken notion that we have any alternatives at our disposal. We do not. There's no better deal on the horizon. Without this compact, Iran would have the capacity to acquire enough material for a nuclear bomb within the next three months. More important, failure to approve the deal would leave Iran's nuclear program completely unchecked and shrouded in secrecy. We simply cannot allow that to happen.

Despite the barrage of attacks from opponents, the agreement — also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) — satisfies every single one of our country's bottom lines. It drastically reduces Iran's stockpiles of enriched uranium and the number of installed centrifuges by two-thirds, prevents it from producing weapons-grade plutonium, and includes one of the most invasive verification systems ever negotiated. As for the crippling economic sanctions responsible for bringing Iran to the negotiating table, we can snap them back into place if Iran violates the terms of the deal.

An agreement of this magnitude must be taken seriously. Unfortunately, there are members of Congress who, like Walker, are attacking the deal for their own political gain. Rather than informing their constituents with facts, they've resorted to stirring doubt through speculation.

Last month, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Ron Johnson tried to discredit the agreement by sounding the alarm over an exaggerated and highly unlikely atmospheric electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack by Iran. Many nuclear arms control experts have expressed strong skepticism about the validity of this EMP scenario. Nonetheless, Johnson — along with a horde of radical, far-right media outlets and conspiracy theorists — pushed this misleading narrative in an attempt to frighten support away from the nuclear deal. Johnson could have used the hearing as an opportunity to examine the substance of the accord. Instead, he helped turn the hearing into spectacle by employing a deceptive storyline that had nothing to do with the deal.

We've heard this brand of fear-mongering and ominous rhetoric before. In his fiery address before the United Nations General Assembly in 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to make the case for military action against Iran with a cartoon bomb and a myriad of alarming allegations regarding their nuclear capacity. He warned that Iran was a year away from developing a nuclear weapon, but a leaked Israeli intelligence report later contradicted his claims, revealing how Iran was "not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons."

Americans are no strangers to deceptive hyperbole and political theater — especially in the realm of international relations — but some special interest groups and the lawmakers they support have stooped to new lows in their collective efforts to scrap this nuclear agreement. Like most of my colleagues, I, too, harbor a deep mistrust of Tehran, but those misgivings help underscore why this deal is so critical.

The agreement deserves strong and measured scrutiny from all sides, but we cannot allow opponents to scare us away from this reasoned and pragmatic approach to stopping Iran's nuclear program.

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, a Democrat, represents Wisconsin's 4th District.

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