Kerry: Rejecting nuke deal would be ‘self-destructive’

Iran will have to live up to the nuclear agreement in full, including taking steps to expand its weapons breakout time, before it starts to benefit from sanctions relief, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday, defending the pact from critics in a major policy address.

On the other hand, the diplomat said, rejecting the deal would hurt America’s standing in the world.

“Without this agreement, Iran’s so-called breakout time was about two months. With this agreement it will increase by a factor of six, to at least a year, and will remain at that level for a decade or more,” Kerry told lawmakers and civil leaders at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

“Rejecting this agreement would not be sending a signal of resolve to Iran, it would be broadcasting a message so puzzling that most people across the globe would find it impossible to comprehend,” Kerry said in the speech, which was broadcast live in Iran in a rare move.

“It’s hard to conceive of a quicker or more self-destructive blow to our nation’s credibility and leadership — not only with respect to this one issue, but across the board, economically, politically, militarily, even morally. We would pay an immeasurable price for this unilateral reversal.”

The speech came minutes after Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski announced her support for the agreement, becoming the veto-sustaining 34th Democrat to back the deal and allowing the Obama administration was able to breathe a major sigh of relief.

The US secretary said Iran had complied with the terms of an interim nuclear agreement signed in Vienna for more than 19 months.

He also said Washington’s support for Israel was “rock solid,” and said the deal makes the Jewish state safer.

The speech was one prong of a renewed campaign by Kerry Wednesday to stump for the deal against critics in the GOP and Israel.

In a letter delivered to Congress Wednesday, Kerry called Israel’s security “sacrosanct,” recounting the billions of dollars the US has provided the Jewish state for missile defense and other security assistance.

US and Israeli officials, he said, are working on a deal to “cement for the next decade our unprecedented levels of military assistance.”

He said the Obama administration would ensure that America’s Arab allies and Israel would have the “political and military support they need” to protect themselves from the threat posed by Iran.

Kerry attacked what he said were myths that have grown up around the agreement, insisting it is not a capitulation to Tehran but instead the best and only way to halt its quest for the bomb.

In 2013, when Obama and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani launched the negotiation process, Iran had already “transformed itself into a nuclear threshold state,” the senior diplomat said.

“In the Obama administration, we were well aware of that troubling fact and, more important, we were already responding to it,” Kerry said, arguing that Iran was already then under tight economic sanctions.

“But we also had to face an obvious fact: sanctions alone were not getting the job done, not even close,” he said.

“They were failing to slow, let alone halt, Iran’s relentless march toward a nuclear weapons capability.”

The US Congress may vote on the Iran deal as early as next week, with talk now shifting to a possible Democratic fillibuster if support for the pact continues to gain steam. The move would allow Democrats to stave off a vote, saving Obama from having to pull out his veto pen.

Earlier in the day, Kerry said not having the deal would make the Middle East less safe.

“I really believe the fastest way to a genuine arms race in the Middle East is to not have this agreement,” Kerry told MSNBC . “Because if you don’t have this agreement, Iran has already made clear what its direction is.”

He added that if the US rejects the deal, it would confirm the fears of Iran’s leaders “that you can’t deal with the West, that you can’t trust the West.”