US Rep. Pompeo: One year later, Obama’s Iran nuclear deal puts us at increased risk

By Rep. Mike Pompeo

Today marks one year since Secretary of State John Kerry and Mohammad Zarif agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).  On this date, we ought to take the opportunity not to re-litigate that “political commitment,” but evaluate whether it has helped protect the United States, our people, and our interests.  Unfortunately for our country’s future, the answer to that inquiry is a resounding no.  As a result, Congress must act to change Iranian behavior, and, ultimately, the Iranian regime.
The JCPOA can perhaps delay Iran’s nuclear weapons program for a few years.  Conversely, it has virtually guaranteed that Iran will have the freedom to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons at the end of the commitment.  Further, in the past year, the Islamic Republic of Iran has launched multiple ballistic missiles – testing increasingly complex and longer range missiles.  It has grown its support of terrorist groups, and it continues to take hostages.  The deal has, in fact, made our country less safe.
Every year since 1984, the U.S. State Department has designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism, a finding the Department renewed again last month.  Yet the Obama administration still holds out that its political commitment, drafted by a few bureaucrats committed to getting a deal at any cost, can change decades of Iran’s entrenched and militant commitment to “death to America.”  As a result of the billions of dollars flowing into Iran after the JCPOA, the Iranian regime is able to increase its support to terrorist group groups like Hezbollah.  That group’s chief said recently that “Hezbollah’s budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, are from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”