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GOP Senators Warn Iran about Nuclear Deal
Freshman Sen. Tom Cotton gathered a group of 47 GOP senators to send an open letter to the Iranian regime concerning any potential nuclear deal. The letter warns the mullahs that the deal — especially if not approved by Congress — is likely to be overturned once a new President enters the White House.
“It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system … Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the senators wrote. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”
Arms-control advocates and supporters of the negotiations argue that the next president and the next Congress will have a hard time changing or canceling any Iran deal — which is reportedly near done — especially if it is working reasonably well.
Since “working reasonably well” seems to mean “letting Iran get nukes,” an anti-proliferation President is unlikely to endorse the agreement in January 2017. Democrats are shocked and appalled by the insolence shown by nearly half the U.S. Senate and spared no time condemning their motives and patriotism.
The foreign minister of Iran mocked the letter as propaganda, but the White House found his language far too easy on the evil Republicans. Inaptly named Press Secretary Josh Earnest whinged, “writing a letter like this that appeals to the hardliners in Iran is frankly just the latest in a strategy, a partisan strategy, to undermine the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy and advance our national interests around the world.”
Senate Minority Leader (I love saying that) Harry Reid said “Let’s be clear, Republicans are undermining our commander in chief while empowering the ayatollahs.” The bruised and battered Nevada senator forgot to mention that “the ayatollahs” agree with the White House on the negotiations quite heartily.
Note that this is the same Harry Reid who voted for the Iraq War, then declared it lost while we still had troops in theater. And who can forget House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s cozy summit with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in 2007, or Minority Whip David Bonior’s anti-Bush meeting with Saddam Hussein in 2002? Imagine the outrage if Sen. Cotton had visited Israel instead of merely writing a letter?
It’s a strange turn of events to have Democrats treating half the U.S. Senate and Prime Minister Netanyahu as enemies of the state while embracing the theocratic, women-hating, gay-lynching, Holocaust enthusiasts in Tehran as trustworthy allies. Valerie Jarrett must really want this Iran deal.
Published in Foreign Policy
They’re your fellow Americans, and they also have the vote. If they think that a good chunk of the Senate is flirting with treason for political gain I think that you might have a problem.
But what if it has the opposite effect?
Any party which openly undermines the Administration in its dealings with a foreign power, and apparently to achieve a domestic political objective, is putting self before country – or at least it could look that way very easily.
It could, but in this case it won’t.
95% of Americans will only vote for one party or the other in the next election. And of the 5% (or perhaps even fewer) who are truly undecided, 95% of those will have forgotten this event by the next election – assuming they have even taken notice of it in the first place, which is itself highly unlikely.
I can’t imagine any circumstances under which 47 Democrats might attempt to prevent treason. On the other hand, a Democrat committing treason is a ho-hum “Dog bites man.” type of story.
#31 Zafar
Definitionally treason includes provision of aid & comfort to the enemy (maybe also extending to enemy combatants per post-9/11?).
To the best of my knowledge, the US does not hold the Islamic Republic of Iran to be an enemy — certainly there has been no Congressional declaration of war effectuating such a designation.
I’m not sure whether the armistice that halted armed conflict between the US and the DPRK in 1953 stipulated that the DPRK is held by the US to be an enemy in the formal sense.
(Can anyone help me on the history, i.e., whether Congress actually furnished Truman with a formal declaration of war for purposes of prosecuting the Korean-theater conflict?)
I mention the DPRK because of the parallel on the nuclear-negotiations front. Ex-president Jimmy Carter’s freelancing with the DPRK had, by some accounts, a substantive effect on the tenor and outcome of those negotiations during the Clinton Administration — legally the “treason” concept couldn’t be invoked but there might have been excellent grounds for invoking the Logan Act.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act
Whether the present topic rises to the level of a Logan Act violation (per the Wiki article citation/insinuation) is open for debate, but again, “treason” is not the issue — “interference” is the issue, and whether that interference is truly infelicitous for the proper governance of our Republic or merely an inconvenience to the foreign-policy designs of the Executive.
Bottom line: If this is to be designated as “treason,” I’m all for it. That will call forth a Congressional declaration of war against Iran, so as to make the “treason” designation stick legally. Such a declaration has been long overdue — although I’m not sure that it’s what Obama has in mind.
The stakes are high and this president has decided to take the middle finger to all restraints on power. It’s about time the other team figured out that you don’t bring a squirt gun to a street fight.
This man will leave wreckage in our nation that will take decades to heal, and much will never heal. Once you cross the lines that held a republic together, the places where no one would go, you do not return to equilibrium of the past.
The Democrats understand that once you have power, you kill the filibuster, stop budgeting and grab as much change as you can. If the Republicans fail to grasp this, we will continue to spin with a leftward tilt.
Assuming they can win the executive and hold congress, they better cut the filibuster and go on a rampage of change to correct the mess of the last forty years, or they will just be a holding pattern.
This action is a glimmer of hope that a few are learning to play by the new game rules.
And where do you classify the weapon of “letter writing” in your analogy? I would rank it around the level of high-powered squirt gun: annoying enough to be noticed but still powerless.
Seeing as how this appears to be one of the only issues the entire Republican caucus can agree on, I would like to see some action stronger than just a feckless letter. Granted, the Congress does not have such great jurisdiction, but I’m sure they could come up with some type of legislation to at least make Obama veto tougher measures against Iran.
ZAFAR:
What Tom Cotton and his colleages in the Senate did was to clearly state the law. Please do not mention treason again.
Or if, say, a President did so, telling a foreign leader that he’ll have more “flexibility” after his last election? That would be like putting self before country.
At least it could look that way very easily.
That is cowardly advice if you accept that the other side has very different goals, which are incompatible with my goals. I am not interested in appeasing the Alinskyite locust.
They didn’t just “state the law.” They intentionally undermined ongoing peace negotiations.
@fred, They aren’t peace negotiations if they give Iran a clear path to a nuclear weapon.
Yet again, Fred is more critical of Republicans than he is of Obama.
That’s rich.
Tu quoque?
It’s not cowardly, it’s realistic. They are your fellow Americans, like it or not. You need to take them with you.
That seems a bit long to have it tattooed on your knuckles, or even your trapezius. But it should go into the Ricochet quote hall of fame, in the ‘signs on the road to civil war’ section, I guess.
And that person is never going to vote for a Republican, because racism. As he said, who cares? One can’t let zealots drive actions…
Dog bites man. ;)
Yeah, well I got a spot for it, don’t you worry about thaaaaaat.
It’s just over the next hill. Just one more hill, and then we’ll fight them. For now, just keep carrying the weight. Yes, there will be water before we fight. Just over the next hill.
I do not disagree about the need to fight–if that’s the right word–& better sooner than later. It’s the way anger emerges in speech that raises my eyebrow. Rather of the ‘pop goes the weasel’ variety… Here, enjoy.
In 1985, I wrote a letter to my congress woman in response to her signing a letter to the Soviet sponsored strongman Daniel Ortega, essentially apologizing for Ronald Reagan’s efforts to deny the Soviets and Castro yet another communist beachhead in our hemisphere. I felt then, and feel now, that her efforts, as well as those of then Senator John Kerry (who travelled to Nicaragua to personally encourage Ortega) were subversive to US interests, defined as the advancement of human freedom, in defiance of totalitarian slave masters. Kerry’s trip, by the way, emboldened the little Marxist Ortega so much so that he immediately made a trip to Moscow, a move which even Tip O’Neil found embarrassing.
It is for the same reason, a preference for freedom and the real peace that follows, that I’m heartened by the 47 who signed the letter to Iran. My friend Fred errs, in my opinion, when he asks how we would feel if Democrats did the same thing because, to paraphrase Bill Buckley, it’s like saying that someone who pushes a little old lady out of the path of an oncoming bus, and someone who pushes a little old lady into the path of an oncoming bus, are just a couple of guys who go around pushing little old ladies. The distinction between those who would save life and liberty and those who admit their desire to annihilate a people is a meaningful one. That liberals conveniently forget their own history of undermining the friends of liberty is to be expected. We ought to be reminding them, rather than again accepting their premise.
Well said Dave!
the same folks who call Bush and Cheney a war criminal… that’s the problem with “treason” these days. One might suppose that the fantasy movie about a Bush assassination, and I know some might even speculate about the extraconstitutional or downright illegal actions of Obama… either way, I don’t think that this letter is something anyone should be complaining about unless they are positively hyperventilating about literally everything Obama does.
You know you are on shaky ethical ground when your rational is that others have done questionable actions in the past.
So, your problem with it wasn’t a matter of form, but rather than you disagreed with it?
Mendel:
TKC1101:It’s about time the other team figured out that you don’t bring a squirt gun to a street fight.
And where do you classify the weapon of “letter writing” in your analogy? I would rank it around the level of high-powered squirt gun: annoying enough to be noticed but still powerless.
Fred Cole: “So, your problem with it wasn’t a matter of form, but rather than you disagreed with it?”
In the same sense that I always disagree with efforts that lend support to a mortal enemy of our country, whether those efforts originate in the Congress or the White House. The world would have been much better off had someone successfully interfered with “Peace negotiations” in Munich in 1938, wouldn’t you agree?
The thing is, they have a constitutional right to undermine them. He can’t write treaties without them. It’s only fair that the other party understand it’s a temporary arrangement.
I am picturing European headlines and varied international propaganda in 2017 when President Walker calls a stop to this executive agreement: they won’t be pretty. The headlines don’t matter, but it actually does matter that foreign governments understand the limitations to what Obama is doing. Because of the very high probability that a Republican president — maybe even a Democrat — will drop this executive agreement on Day One, it is very much in our interests to be sure our allies realize what they are dealing with.
The Senators may be helping to preserve a future President’s freedom of action and relationship with allies.
Most of them, like Iran, probably have someone who pays enough attention to American politics to figure it out already. But in that case, the worst it did is to change nothing.
That would be about 95% of the membership at Ricochet.
My own pithy preference for these poeple would be unwelcome under the CoC. And they horse they rode in on.