[The US Congressional hawks are trying to pass a bill to empower themselves with new authorities to be able to kill a deal. The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (S.615) (ref.: <https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/615/text>) would give them the authority to block a nuclear deal. Obama has threatened to veto the bill, but these hawks are apparently just 3 votes shy of a veto-proof majority. ***If the Congress kills the deal, then what - a devastating war!?***]
I/III. http://www.vox.com/2015/3/9/8177815/republicans-foreign-policy-sabotage Republicans are crossing a dangerous new line: sabotaging US foreign policy Updated by Max Fisher on March 9, 2015, 11:14 p.m. ET @Max_Fisher [email protected] House Speaker John Boehner shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after his speech to Congress Win McNamee/Getty Throughout Barack Obama's presidency, Republicans in Congress have deployed a strategy that has worked remarkably well for them: oppose, obstruct, and sabotage the Obama administration at every turn. "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president," Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, then the Senate minority leader, said in 2010. A few months later, McConnell acknowledged that Republicans had decided to deny President Obama any bipartisan support, not because they necessarily opposed each and every initiative, but to hurt Obama politically. "We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals," he said. "Because we thought -- correctly, I think -- that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan." This strategy led Republicans to adopt largely unprecedented tactics of obstructionism and sabotage. But no matter how far they went, there was one line they always avoided crossing: undermining US foreign policy. That line is now being crossed. Republicans, driven by earnest policy disagreements with Obama over his approach to Iran, are bringing the tactics they used to undermine Obama's legislative agenda into the previously sacrosanct realm of foreign policy. "THE GOP ARE BLAZING NEW TRAILS IN POLITICIZATION OF FOREIGN POLICY -- AND DEBASEMENT OF THEIR INSTITUTIONS" Republicans are overtly sabotaging not just Obama's Iran policy, but also his constitutionally enshrined authority over foreign policy. This is unprecedented. If the trend continues -- Republicans have already extended their efforts to Obama's relationship with Israel -- it endangers not just US policy toward the Middle East, but the very way that the United States makes foreign policy. The possible implications for the United States and its role as global leader should worry Americans of every political stripe. Republicans are adapting the tactics they used against legislation like Obamacare to Obama's foreign policy Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Geneva, where nuclear negotiations are being held (RICK WILKING/AFP/Getty) Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Geneva, where nuclear negotiations are being held. (RICK WILKING/AFP/Getty) Until now, for all the tactics of obstruction Republicans used against Obama's legislative agenda, they generally treated foreign policy as sacrosanct. They got close only once before, when they threatened to block Obama's 2010 nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia. But they backed down when foreign policy graybeards from Henry Kissinger to Colin Powell told them to knock it off. Republicans, after all, tend to prize America's role as the world's sole superpower. They see this as crucial to the future of the United States and would not put their own partisan political goals ahead of it. Even if they disagree with Obama's execution of foreign policy, and would say so openly, they refrained from sabotaging him in the way they had on domestic policy. Until the Iran talks. Republicans are earnestly alarmed about the Obama administration's effort to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. They believe Iran is negotiating in bad faith and will exploit any deal to further its nuclear program. Though many analysts find this argument unpersuasive, it is a valid position, and it's fair play to oppose the Iran deal on those grounds. But that opposition has grown into something much bigger than that, and with consequences beyond Iran policy. Republicans, joined by some Democrats, tried for months to pass new economic sanctions on Iran. The aim was clear: to kill the negotiations, humiliating Obama on the world stage in the process. The US is offering sanctions relief to Iran as part of any deal. By passing new sanctions while the talks are still ongoing, Congress would send the message that the president is not actually in charge of foreign policy and that the US cannot be trusted to uphold its word. Iran would have little choice but to walk away. Republicans have not been able to pass new sanctions; Democrats, and even a number of Republicans, have seemed unwilling to so openly embarrass their own president on the world stage. The moment the line was crossed came on January 8, when McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner took matters into their own hands. They secretly arranged for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also opposes Iran talks and has a famously poor relationship with Obama, to speak to a joint session of Congress urging them to kill the negotiations. "We are sailing into uncharted waters" Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks before a joint session of Congress on March 3, 2014 (Win McNamee/Getty) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks before a joint session of Congress on March 3, 2014. (Win McNamee/Getty) Even Fox News was outraged: here was a foreign ally going behind the president's back, working with an opposition party to undermine the sitting president of the United States. And Republicans were helping him do it. "We are sailing into uncharted waters," Robert Kagan, a prominent foreign policy hawk who worked in the Reagan-era State Department and later on John McCain's foreign policy team, wrote in an alarmed Washington Post op-ed. "Bringing a foreign leader before Congress to challenge a US president's policies is unprecedented." Kagan warned that in some ways, the even greater danger was that such tactics could well become routine: "After next week," he wrote, "it will be just another weapon in our bitter partisan struggle." After Netanyahu's visit, Republicans went further still. Forty-seven Republican senators signed an open letter, organized by superhawk Sen. Tom Cotton, to Iranian leaders hinting that they could blow up any deal between the US and Iran if they disapproved. "CONGRESS VIOLATES THE CONSTITUTION BY HOSTING THE SPEECH" The mere act of senators contacting the leaders of a foreign nation to undermine and contradict their own president is an enormous breach of protocol. But this went much further: Republicans are telling Iran, and, by extension the world, that the American president no longer has the power to conduct foreign policy, and that foreign leaders should assume Congress could revoke American pledges at any moment. "Iran's ayatollahs need to know before agreeing to any nuclear deal," Sen. Cotton told Bloomberg View, that "any unilateral executive agreement is one they accept at their own peril." A foreign leader reading this letter -- whether he or she is Iranian or not -- is learning that you are better off walking away than trying to negotiate, in good faith or bad, with the United States of America. "Between the Netanyahu invite and the Cotton letter, the GOP are blazing new trails in politicization of foreign policy -- and debasement of their institutions," David Rothkopf, the CEO of the Foreign Policy group and a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, tweeted. (I've cleaned up the abbreviations common to Twitter.) In some ways, it looks like Obamacare all over again. Much as Republicans attempted to stop or subvert Obamacare by undermining the institutions responsible for passing and implementing it, they are now seeking to stop or subvert the Iran negotiations by weakening US foreign policy itself. And much as their brinksmanship and obstructionism on Obamacare exacerbated the partisan polarization that has broken Congress, they are now risking similar damage to the ability of the world's lone superpower to conduct its foreign affairs -- well beyond just Iran policy. The polarization of foreign policy puts all US interests at risk, including the security of Israel Netanyahu Obama Netanyahu meets with President Obama in the Oval Office. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) There are legitimate policy disagreements over Iran negotiations in Washington, so the line between principled policy opposition and unprincipled partisan sabotage can be blurry. It may help, then, to examine how Republicans' new approach is damaging a US policy that should be less controversial: support for Israel. The bipartisan consensus on Israel goes back decades. Republican leaders, by inviting Netanyahu to Congress behind Obama's back, and by pressuring members of Congress to side with Netanyahu against their own president, are both exploiting and endangering that bipartisan consensus. Republicans' hope is that by forcing members of Congress to choose between Israel and Obama, Congress will side with Israel, and thus against Obama. But the risk is that some will side with Obama and against Israel -- many Democrats signaled as much by refusing to attend the speech -- and that support for Israel will thus become an increasingly partisan issue. As "pro-Israel" becomes increasingly coded as a Republican issue rather than a bipartisan one, it will likely help Republicans win certain races, but it will substantially erode the consensus on Israel and thus risk eroding US support for Israel. If you earnestly care about Israel, and about the US-Israel relationship, then this trend should alarm you. Republicans' tactics are so extreme they may be unconstitutional Tom Cotton Senator Tom Cotton at a campaign event. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) A premise of Republican meddling on Iran and Israel is that Congress has a right -- indeed, a responsibility -- for oversight of some aspects of US foreign policy. This is true, and Sen. Cotton's letter points out as an example that the Senate will have to approve any formal treaty between the US and Iran. Still, Congress' role in foreign policy is constitutionally quite limited. For over 200 years the president has been designated as the "sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations," as founding father John Marshall put it in an 1800 speech that the Supreme Court codified into constitutional law in 1936. The idea of what became known as the "sole organ" doctrine is that the US government needs to be a single unified entity on the world stage in order to conduct effective foreign policy. Letting the president and Congress independently set their own foreign policies would lead to chaos. There is disagreement over where constitutional law draws the line between what role Congress is and is not allowed in US foreign policy. But it seems awfully clear that House Speaker John Boehner going behind the president's back to negotiate with the Israeli leader violates at the very least the spirit of constitutional limits on Congress. Indeed, a number of constitutional legal scholars -- some of them quite conservative -- have questioned the constitutionality of Republicans' actions. David Bernstein of George Mason University wrote at the Washington Post that Boehner's invitation to Netanyahu "violates constitutional norms that have been observed for generations" and was contrary to the separation of powers. He explained, "Direct diplomatic relations with foreign governments are exclusive in the executive." Boehner disobeyed that. Another constitutional scholar, Michael Ramsey, put it more simply: "Congress violates the Constitution by hosting the speech." The point is not that John Boehner is going to be dragged before the Supreme Court -- he won't -- but that Republicans crossed a line that wasn't just a matter of protocol, but of strict and meaningful constitutional limits in how foreign policy is conducted. And that was before Sen. Cotton and 46 other Republican senators wrote the Iranian leader to tell him to disregard President Obama's promises. It's worth pointing out there is a law specifically prohibiting US citizens from negotiating with foreign governments without official permission, and thus interfering in the foreign policy of the United States. Called the Logan Act, it's named for a state legislator who corresponded with French officials in 1798 without his government's permission because he disapproved of US policy toward France. Cotton is not going to face prosecution for violating the Logan Act. "No one is ever actually prosecuted under the measure," legal scholar Peter Spiro wrote recently. "It's more a focal point for highlighting structural aspects of foreign relations." And that's the point: the letter goes way beyond the legally articulated limits on Congress' role in foreign policy. The spirit of the Logan Act, like the "sole organ" doctrine, is meant to enforce the idea that the president is in charge of foreign policy. It's not supposed to be like legislation, where Obama and Congress fight it out on a somewhat level playing field. It's meant to be unified. Republicans, by trying to change that, are undermining the very premise of how US foreign policy is supposed to work. Fracturing foreign policy between the president and Congress would be a disaster for US interests President Obama on the Great Wall in 2009 (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty) President Obama on the Great Wall of China in 2009. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty) The greatest harm, should Republicans continue this trend, would be to the ability of the US president to credibly conduct American foreign policy. Even if you agree with Republicans that Obama's Iran talks are a bad idea, the fact that Republicans have gone beyond opposing a deal to overtly undermining US foreign policy should worry you. Republicans are now freelancing their own foreign policy, conducting shadow diplomacy with both Israel and Iran, dividing US foreign policy against itself. Who, a foreign leader might reasonably ask, is really in charge in Washington? How can I risk negotiating with the US when Congress might sabotage any deal we strike? How can I make difficult, politically painful concessions to the US if Republicans might end up pulling out the rug from under me? How much can I really trust the US to uphold its word? How safe a bet is working with the Americans? One of the central lessons of this dysfunctional era in American politics is that one side's overreach quickly becomes the other side's tactic. If you're a Republican, you should ask what you will think if these practices are normalized. What will you think when Democrats in Congress employ these tactics to undermine a Republican administration? This is not to say that the world will shrug off American leadership; the US is still the Earth's most powerful and important country. But foreign policy is won or lost on the margins more often than you might think. International agreements can succeed or fail with just a smidge more or less trust between the parties. A major US foreign policy challenge this century will be competing for regional influence with powers such as China and Russia. If you're, say, the foreign minister of Myanmar, trying to decide whether to throw in with China or with America, you are going to be a little less likely to hedge toward the US if you think its foreign policy-making apparatus is fundamentally broken. Throughout Obama's presidency, Republicans have frequently warned that he is projecting insufficient strength or will to maintain America's global standing. It seems odd, then, that their answer to this is to publicly undermine and humiliate the president -- and thus sacrifice, for short-term partisan gain, the American resolve and leadership they see as so important for the world. II/III. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/10/republican-letter-nuclear-deal-iran-obama-success Republicans want to stop a nuclear deal with Iran. They may have ensured Obama gets one Ali Gharib Sending a letter to Iranian leadership warning them that conservatives will try to kill any deal Obama negotiates may not have had the effect Tom Cotton and colleagues wanted Tom Cotton wants to stop a nuclear deal with Iran. Photographic illustration: DonkeyHotey / Flickr via Creative Commons In an eyebrow-raising missive to "the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran", 47 Republican Senators, led by Arkansas's Tom Cotton, ostensibly gave the Iranians a lesson in America's constitutional system - though, despite Cotton's Harvard training as a lawyer, they got some details wrong. The real purpose of the letter, however, wasn't education - the Iranians, by all accounts, understand our system damned well - but a threat. The Senate Republicans warned the Iranians that they will do whatever they can to kill a deal with the Iranians, even after it's already been signed. The letter's notion that a deal could be reversed by the next president means that not only will they try to kill one now, they will keep doing everything to kill it for years to come. The accusations that the letter-signers committed "treason", as the New York Daily News put it, or that the letter is a criminal violation of the constitutionally dubious Logan Act are a bit much. The Republican move is inappropriate, clownish and, above all, dangerous, but no one should go to prison for signing on. The letter is also evasive and, by extension, so are its signatories. What they and their allies really want is a war. The deal they purport to want - Cotton told MSNBC he wants "complete nuclear disarmament," though Iran has no nuclear arms - is impossible to achieve. Cotton, for his part, knows this: he has said that his aim is to thwart any agreement whatsoever. If no deal is reached, what does the Senate GOP think will happen? Peace on earth and goodwill to men? Iran will continue to build up its nuclear program, and the world will eventually face a stark choice between Iran being a screwdriver's turn away from a nuclear bomb, or using its own traditional bombs in Iran and starting a disastrous war. It was left to Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to explain to the Senate Republicans, in an epic bit of trolling, that though a deal may be struck without Congressional approval, it would still carry the force of international law. Under US law, designated "treaties" need Senate approval. But under international law, agreements between two states - irrespective of internal national laws - are binding. But the Republicans' stated purpose wouldn't be entirely unreasonable: Congress, like any institution in a system of multiple power centers, wants to assert itself, and members have every right to try to gain a formal say over any Iran deal. Attempts to assert that power, however, needn't delve into flawed legal arguments and acts of diplomatic impropriety. The Republican Senator spearheading the effort to get a Congressional vote on the deal, Foreign Relations Committee chair Bob Corker of Tennessee, stayed off the letter. "I just don't view that as where I need to be today", he told Politico. "My goal is to get 67 or more people" - the number necessary to override President Obama's promised veto of the legislation - "on something that will affect the outcome." So it's a bummer for Corker that Cotton's efforts seem to have hurt his efforts to affect the outcome. One Senate Democrat at the forefront of cooperating with Corker, Virginia's Tim Kaine, has already said this "partisan and nutty behavior" makes it more difficult for him to join his colleagues across the aisle. Corker might consider explaining that to his 47 colleagues, including the full Senate GOP leadership, who signed the letter. As Obama rightly noted, they have formed an "ironic" and "unusual coalition" with Iranian hardliners, who also seek to block a deal at any cost. The winners, then, might be the moderates in this mixed-up international game of chess: Obama, who is a bit closer to negotiating an agreement with Iran absent naysaying Congressional oversight; and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who stands to bolster his own political clout if such a deal is struck. And those winners would include the nations they represent, who keep steadily moving away from the specter of war, despite hardliners' efforts in both countries. III. http://www.vox.com/2015/3/9/8180933/zarif-cotton-letter Read the Iranian foreign minister's super passive-aggressive response to Tom Cotton Updated by Max Fisher on March 9, 2015, 11:35 p.m. ET @Max_Fisher Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has published an official response to the Republican letter to Iran's leaders, signed by 47 senators, warning that Congress or a future president might overturn a nuclear deal if they dislike the terms. (You can read the full text of the letter, organized by Sen. Tom Cotton, here.) Zarif's response is presented as an official government statement, so it's written in an awkward third person, but Zarif still fires off some zingers. Here is the full text, with the most notable lines bolded (the main points are summed up below): Asked about the open letter of 47 US Senators to Iranian leaders, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Dr. Javad Zarif, responded that "in our view, this letter has no legal value and is mostly a propaganda ploy. It is very interesting that while negotiations are still in progress and while no agreement has been reached, some political pressure groups are so afraid even of the prospect of an agreement that they resort to unconventional methods, unprecedented in diplomatic history. This indicates that like Netanyahu, who considers peace as an existential threat, some are opposed to any agreement, regardless of its content. Zarif expressed astonishment that some members of US Congress find it appropriate to write to leaders of another country against their own President and administration. He pointed out that from reading the open letter, it seems that the authors not only do not understand international law, but are not fully cognizant of the nuances of their own Constitution when it comes to presidential powers in the conduct of foreign policy. Foreign Minister Zarif added that "I should bring one important point to the attention of the authors and that is, the world is not the United States, and the conduct of inter-state relations is governed by international law, and not by US domestic law. The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfil the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations. The Iranian Foreign Minister added that "change of administration does not in any way relieve the next administration from international obligations undertaken by its predecessor in a possible agreement about Irans peaceful nuclear program." He continued "I wish to enlighten the authors that if the next administration revokes any agreement with the stroke of a pen, as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law." He emphasized that if the current negotiation with P5+1 result in a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it will not be a bilateral agreement between Iran and the US, but rather one that will be concluded with the participation of five other countries, including all permanent members of the Security Council, and will also be endorsed by a Security Council resolution. Zarif expressed the hope that his comments "may enrich the knowledge of the authors to recognize that according to international law, Congress may not modify the terms of the agreement at any time as they claim, and if Congress adopts any measure to impede its implementation, it will have committed a material breach of US obligations. The Foreign Minister also informed the authors that majority of US international agreements in recent decades are in fact what the signatories describe as "mere executive agreements" and not treaties ratified by the Senate. He reminded them that "their letter in fact undermines the credibility of thousands of such mere executive agreements that have been or will be entered into by the US with various other governments. Zarif concluded by stating that "the Islamic Republic of Iran has entered these negotiations in good faith and with the political will to reach an agreement, and it is imperative for our counterparts to prove similar good faith and political will in order to make an agreement possible." The substantive points here are that the US has a commitment to uphold its international agreements even if it changes administrations, or if Congress doesn't like it, or of the deal is an executive agreement rather than a full treaty. Zarif also points that any agreement would technically be not just with Iran but also with the other states that are party to the Iran talks: the UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China. It's also noteworthy that Zarif defends the Obama administration against the letter and clearly states that he understands it was meant to undermine the president. This is surely deliberate, and aimed at reassuring the Americans he understands what's happening, and perhaps also at Iranians who might not see it as readily. A number of the lines, though, are just Zarif having fun with Sen. Cotton, whose letter took on a strangely condescending tone given that Zarif and many other members of the Iranian government were educated in the US. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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