Iran-contradictions

In the 1980s, Ollie North and Fawn Hall gave us the Iran-contra affair. Now we’re experiencing the Iran-contradiction affair.

A week ago, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) went on television and proposed abandoning the nuclear deal just reached with Iran and returning to the 2013 interim agreement that started the talks. “What I would suggest is, if you can’t get there with this deal, is to keep the interim deal in place,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” He repeated his idea of “keeping the interim deal in place that’s been fairly successful and have a new crack at it with a new president that doesn’t have the baggage of Obama.”

It’s a reasonable argument, but it was roundly refuted by . . . Lindsey Graham. In November 2013, he panned the interim deal he now praises as successful. “This still allows 18,000 centrifuges to stay in place, and it basically just suspends construction of the plutonium reactor,” he told CNN, adding: “I’m very worried. . . . This interim deal gives the Iranians $7 billion in cash, and it leaves in place one of the most sophisticated enrichment programs around.”

At that time, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) was even more alarmed. “I think people are very concerned that the interim deal becomes the norm,” something that would make Iran “a threat to the world,” he said then. He called that temporary agreement “a total victory” for Iran.

But just three weeks ago, Corker, now chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CBS’s Bob Schieffer that if Iran talks fail, he’d rely on . . . the very same “Joint Plan of Action” he panned 16 months ago. “Number one, we do have JPOA in place, the interim deal, and it could continue for some time,” he said. “It keeps the existing sanctions in place, although there is some sanctions relief for Iran, okay, but it stays in place for a while.”

Back in 2012, Netanyahu said the international sanctions regime had been “ineffective” and “hasn’t worked” and had failed to deter Iran’s nuclear progress. Even after the United States and Europe toughened sanctions early in 2012, Netanyahu said that year that there hadn’t been “any impact on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.” He had earlier predicted that sanctions “probably” wouldn’t work at all.

But in criticizing Obama’s agreement last week, Netanyahu said sanctions — sanctions he had said weren’t working — had “proven effective” against Iran.

More often, lawmakers are at odds with themselves. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who on Monday formally announced his presidential candidacy, complained earlier this year that “too many of our allies and strategic partners see our foreign policy as a riddle and our actions as inconsistent with our rhetoric. They only see movements toward disengagement and feel that we’re overly eager to negotiate a deal with Iran.”

But as U.S. negotiators completed the Iran framework, with the support of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, Rubio told the Associated Press that he would “absolutely” rescind the Iran deal — even if it meant defying the very allies he had recently accused Obama of alienating.

One thing didn’t change: Rubio opposed Obama then, and he opposes him now.