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No, Kerry Isn’t “Saying Too Much” About the Nuclear Deal

Many of the deal's critics in the Senate are asking useless questions.
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William Saletan complains that Kerry talks too much about the Iran deal and creates unnecessary confusion. This was his first example:

Kerry also told the Senate:

The supreme leader’s quote is in this document that Iran will never go after a nuclear weapon. And the Iranians happily put that in. … He believes he stopped them because he issued a fatwa, and he has declared the policy of their country is not to do it. So he is, as a matter of sovereignty and pride, making a true statement. He doesn’t believe the Americans stopped them. He said they didn’t want to get one in the first place.

If Kerry really believes that, then he traded away sanctions for a concession that had already been made.

I don’t know what Kerry “really” believes about this, but I assume the reason that Kerry said this was to give an answer to a rather silly question. Kerry was asked whether the deal would prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and then he was pressed a little later on Khamenei’s statement that Iran had not been “stopped” by the Americans from building one. Kerry gave this answer to explain why Khamenei’s statement didn’t discredit the deal, and to make sense for the committee of what Khamenei had said. It doesn’t mean that Kerry necessarily believes what Khamenei said. He was swatting down yet another dumb objection to the agreement. This isn’t proof that Kerry is “saying too much.” It is proof that many of the deal’s critics at the Foreign Relations Committee hearing were asking useless questions. Saletan wants to blame Kerry for defending the deal against confused and ill-informed challenges, but the critics are the ones responsible for that.

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