Wait, what?

WASHINGTON — Just hours before the Senate convenes to start the process of voting on the Iran nuclear deal, Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) delivered a forceful message for his colleagues: either support the nuclear agreement or allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon.

“We can take the strongest step ever toward blocking Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, or we can block this agreement and all but ensure Iran will have the fissile material it would need to make a bomb in a matter of months,” Reid said Tuesday, speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “We cannot have it both ways.”

The current nuclear accord, negotiated in July between Iran, the U.S. and five world powers, is not only the best option the U.S. currently has to block Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but is likely to the last opportunity to do so, Reid said.

Reid emphasized his commitment to ensuring that Israel maintains its qualitative military edge in the region and insisted that implementation of the nuclear deal will make Israel safer. He said he had “closely reviewed” the legislation Cardin proposed, which would allow the U.S. to supply Israel with the bunker-busting Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the 30,000 pound bomb that is, theoretically, the weapon most capable of destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities if the agreement were to collapse.

Reid did not specify whether he would support Cardin’s legislation, but it is unlikely the Obama administration will approve the sale of the massive bomb to Israel. As Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association noted last week, B-2 or B-52 bombers are the only planes capable of carrying the MOP, and the sale of either plane to Israel would violate U.S. treaty commitments.