OPINION: Iran nuclear deal is test case: Party or country?

Our Founding Fathers including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were very cognizant of the dangers of political party allegiance. Over the last six years their fears have been proven valid. Under President Obama the nation has suffered from increased divisions and partisan heel digging. His policies have divided the United States on racial, political and economic lines like never before.

Unfortunately for Montana and the nation, Sen. Jon Tester’s propensity to support the president’s positions regardless of merit has helped exacerbate these divisions. It is time for Sen. Tester to scrap his party allegiance and pledge instead allegiance to the nation.

This Iran nuclear deal is a case in point. Iran is a clear and present danger to the United States and to world peace. This rogue nation is the chief sponsor of terrorism throughout the world and especially in the Middle East. The Iranian Quds force has the blood of hundreds of American service men and women on their hands. Add to that thousands of Sunni Muslims, Jews and Christians who have died at the hands of Iranian sponsored barbarians in Hamas, Hezbollah and in Bashar al-Assad’s army.

All this while President Obama and both of his secretaries of state (Kerry and Clinton) sit on their hands and hope that the barbarians will somehow “see the light” and change their ways. Not since Neville Chamberlain has the world seen or experienced such a lack of leadership and international timidity.

Montanans and all Americans need you, Sen. Tester, to stand up and speak out forcefully against this travesty.

First: President Obama has again played fast and loose with our Constitution. This is a TREATY and should constitutionally have been subject to the advice and consent of the people’s representatives in the United States Congress. Instead our president ignores the Constitution and goes to the United Nations for approval. This is a slap in the face of every American.

Second: We are about to lift our economic sanctions on Iran as well as Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Quds Force commander who has now travelled to Russia to negotiate new arms deals that will enhance Iran’s terror strategy even more.

Third: This agreement all but guarantees Iran a nuclear capability in a decade or less.

Fourth: Iran still holds four American hostages that the administration’s brilliant negotiators say are not related to this agreement.

Fifth: Iran has stated on many occasions very clearly that they will wipe Israel off the map and at the same time they chant “Death to America.” This agreement will give them the means to achieve both goals.

Sixth: And this is difficult to believe even if the American negotiators are as inept as Kerry, Moniz and their boss Obama have proven to be; the Iranians are able to perform their own inspections of the Parchin military site as a result of a side deal with the IAEA. Let me get this straight… we are going to trust Iran to perform the inspections on their own and they will verify that everything is just hunky dory? Are you kidding?

On June 20, 2009, President Obama sat on the sidelines and watched as the fanatical Iranian government quashed the Green movement toward freedom and shot 26-year-old Neda Agha Soltan in the head. Now this president is complicit in helping those very same fanatics take aim at the heads of all Americans.

This is a dangerous time for America, Sen. Tester. And we need you to do what’s right for the nation, not your party’s leader. Vote against this agreement and vote to OVERIDE any presidential veto.

Richard J. Crouse is a resident of Bigfork.