Only 21 percent of the American public supports the deal that Obama made with Iran; and a bipartisan majority of the Senate opposes it. Yet the filibuster rule blocked the Senate from defeating it, allowing Obama to hail the “historic step forward.”
According to Michael Goodwin, writing for The New York Post, “His “victory” is a disconnect that will live in infamy. The deal is essentially a nonaggression pact with Iran, a form of appeasement that renders unfair any further comparisons to Neville Chamberlain. At least Hitler promised peace at the 1938 Munich conference after the British leader engineered a German annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia.”
Iran kidnaps American seamen and then releases them and it is hailed as a sign of the close relationship between America and Iran. This isn’t friendship. Instead, it’s gamesmanship, and gives Iran the opening it needs to exploit the U.S. market when Iran gains access to some $100 billion in frozen funds. They will use this to undermine America by attacking our energy industry.
According to media reports, Iran plans to immediately boost output by 500,000 barrels a day, with an additional 500,000 barrels a day coming online by year end. Almost immediately after the agreement was signed, Iran’s deputy oil minister bragged his energy companies were ready to boost production and positioned his oil terminals to be ready to increase Iran’s crude exports.
Bloomberg reported that “Iran could haul in more than five times as much cash from oil sales by year-end as the lifting of economic sanctions frees the OPEC member to boost crude exports and attract foreign investment needed to rebuild its energy industry,” adding that “the lifting of sanctions means Iran can immediately boost oil revenue to about $2.35 billion a month, based on the country’s estimated current output of 2.7 million barrels a day and oil at $29 a barrel.”
The prediction is that even if oil hovers between $30 and $35 a barrel, Iran will be pulling in some $3 billion a month by summer and nearly $4 billion a month by December.
Robin Mills, CEO of consultant Qamar Energy, told Bloomberg that the return of Iranian supply "will have an immediate impact in the spot market. Putting this much oil in the market is going to push it down. Iran’s additional crude shipments have the potential to further depress prices, perhaps to as low as $25 a barrel.”
Yet, Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani told USAToday that “he sees no short-term payoff from sanctions relief.”
Then has the audacity to plead that his country needs between $30 and $50 billion in foreign investment in order for the country to hit its 8% growth target for the year.
"Untapped potential in many industries indicates that domestic demand cannot solely push the economy toward eight per cent growth," he said. "Attracting foreign investment will be the best way of using the opportunity of sanctions relief to boost the economy and security," he proposed.
The U.S. economy is growing at a measly two percent and we should help Iran reach 8 percent? Why anybody in the government signed onto this agreement is a sign of shear ignorance and an inability to understand foreign relations.
Even as America sees weekly closures of U.S. oil rigs, spending cuts and the cancellation of drilling projects in the U.S. shale oil industry amid slumping oil prices, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told reporters “that the average production this year will still be above 9 million barrels a day so the drop-off is not viewed as precipitous. Presumably, the expectations are over time that we'll see a slow reversal of that drop-off and that production will be restored."
A barrel of Benchmark Brent crude oil fetched $114 in June 2014; now that barrel costs around $40. Prices have fallen so steeply due to a glut in supply far exceeding demand. Exacerbating the decline in prices, the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided last year to maintain its record production levels despite the fall in prices, in order to maintain its market share in the face of rival U.S. oil producers who have higher production costs.
And now Iran is dumping 500,000 more barrels a day into the market? The American oil industry, already reeling, will be hard pressed to speed recovery when Iran will be underpricing its oil to get back into the marketplace, thanks to Obama’s lifting of sanctions.
Obama is so fixed on a nuclear pact, he has turned a blind eye to the havoc this agreement will have on our economy, our energy industry, and our jobs. We won’t have to worry about Iran’s missiles because we will have destroyed America from within.
Neal Asbury is chief executive of The Legacy Companies. To read more of his work,
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