THUMP – AT 11:47 A.M. ET:  The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has opened hearings on the Iran agreement.  Chairman Bob Corker, who's become highly respected in his position, wasted no time in being kind.  From Fox:

A top Senate Republican accused the Obama administration on Thursday of cutting a deal with Iran that paves its path to a nuclear weapon, telling Secretary of State John Kerry: "You've been fleeced."

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker tore into the nuclear agreement at the start of a hearing before his committee, where Kerry and other top officials were testifying. He said he walked away from a briefing with the secretary a day earlier "depressed," and claimed Iran could eventually build a bomb by simply waiting out the clock and "abiding by this agreement."

"From my perspective, Mr. Secretary, I'm sorry ... I believe you've been fleeced," Corker said.

Kerry, though, vigorously defended the agreement, calling it "fantasy, plain and simple," to think the United States failed to hold out for a better deal at the bargaining table.

"Let me underscore, the alternative to the deal we've reached isn't what we're seeing ads for on TV," he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the first public hearing on the controversial deal to lift economic and other sanctions in exchange for concessions of the Islamic state's nuclear program.

"It isn't a better deal, some sort of unicorn arrangement involving Iran's complete capitulation," Kerry said.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz also said the deal is not "built on trust."

The hearing comes as lawmakers raise new concerns about alleged secret "side deals" struck with Tehran over its nuclear program.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., first brought attention to them Tuesday, saying they learned from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that there were two "side deals" between Iran and the IAEA.

COMMENT:  Please note that no one in Congress, to the best of my knowledge, is championing this agreement, although Nancy Pelosi has said she'd strongly support it.  You don't hear any major figure rushing to CNN to say how wonderful the agreement is. 

Oh, wait, there is one person who said that – Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of the hard-left Nation magazine.  If she's for the deal, all grown-ups should be against it. 

July 23, 2015