WASHINGTON, D.C.—As Americans continue to express strong concerns about the Obama administration’s proposed nuclear deal with Iran, Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) is raising important questions about its secret side deals and their effects on our national security. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports:

The battle between President Barack Obama and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, over the nuclear deal with Iran hit Twitter Wednesday (Aug. 5). Scalise started the 140-character per-argument battle by tweeting that Americans deserve to know details about “secret side deals” connected to the nuclear accord with Iran. Obama tweeted his response four hours later, saying “there are no secret details.” Here are the Scalise/Obama tweets:

The exchange made national headlines—including CNN, the Washington Post, Politico, The Hill, the Boston Herald, and more…

But despite President Obama’s insistence to the contrary, the existence of secret side deals is a well-documented fact and has been confirmed by his own administration.

As The Hill reports, “[t]he only Obama administration official to view confidential ‘side deals’ between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) admitted Wednesday she and her team have only seen rough drafts,” and she insisted that the content of the side deals is “confidential and can’t be submitted to Congress.” Meanwhile, Josh Rogin and Eli Lake write at Bloomberg that Iran and the IAEA “have a side agreement meant to resolve past suspicions about the Parchin [suspected nuclear military] site, and lawmakers’ concerns about it has already become a flashpoint because they do not have access to its text.” 

The Bloomberg piece is also an important read when it comes to assessing whether Iran can be trusted. They write:

The U.S. intelligence community has informed Congress of evidence that Iran was sanitizing its suspected nuclear military site at Parchin, in broad daylight, days after agreeing to a nuclear deal with world powers. For senior lawmakers in both parties, the evidence calls into question Iran’s intention to fully account for the possible military dimensions of its current and past nuclear development.

Meanwhile, Whip Scalise also responded yesterday to President Obama’s false claim that the only alternative to his poorly-negotiated deal is for America to go to war, saying: 

“President Obama should listen to the American people, who are rightly concerned about the effects of this deal on our safety and security. Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, and a nuclear Iran is a global threat to everyone, everywhere. The alternative to President Obama’s bad deal with Iran isn’t war, the alternative is a verifiable, enforceable deal that ends Iran’s nuclear program once and for all and holds Iran accountable instead of trusting them to change their ways. The stakes are too high and the consequences of failure are too dangerous to accept anything less.”