WaPo Editorial Explains why Bibi Should Speak on March 3rd to Congress and the American People

US Secretary of State Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Zarof, Geneva 1-14-15

Source:  Terraizini/AP

Late last night, Cliff May, President of Washington, DC- based Foundation for Defense of America sent out  this important editorial, “The emerging Iran nuclear deal raises major concerns”.   May headlined  this ….… making points you’ve been hearing from FDD for a long time, and demonstrating that even pro-negotiations centrists have now come to believe that President Obama is about to make a mistake of historic proportions.   I headlined an email sent out to my private lists, “The Emerging Iran nuclear deal raises major concerns. It should explain why Bibi should speak on March 3^rd to both Congress and the American people.”  Yisrael Medad  of My Rght Word blog in Israel also sent out the WaPo editorial with this line,” …by the time Bibi gets to Washington, there’ll be standing room only”.  Imre Herzog in Geneva wrote to his international Zionist list, saying, “Excellent editorial and I really hope the Democrats will wake up”.  Dr. Rich Swier of the eponymous eMagazine  here in Florida wrote back saying ‘this is very very bad”.

Doubtless here will be more news later this month about what’s inside the negotiating package. Indications are that the intense weekly sessions between Secretary of State Kerry and Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif reflect bilateral discussions that the rest of the P5+1 will be confronted with to accept as final agreement terms just before the March 24th date. In the meantime, the American Jewish community is  divided on the issue of Bibi’s speech to a joint session of Congress on March 3^rd. Last weekend  several  Democratic  Congressional  Representatives pounding on Israeli Ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, a Miami native, former Republican strategist and Netanyahu insider in a Philadelphia meeting about the lack of wisdom of Netanyahu’s acceptance of House Speaker Boehner’s invitation to speak to a Joint Session of Congress.  Some Democratic Senators and these and other House Minority members have indicated that they either will be elsewhere engaged, as Vice President Biden intimated.  However, in view of today’s Washington Post editorial , perhaps  these Democratic Senators and Congressional representatives had best heed the warnings . The dilemma that American Jews face is allegiance to a President who clearly doesn’t have “Israel’s back” against the existential threat from Iran’s nukes and soon, ICBMs with North Korea’s help.   These warnings  have given  heft  to the rumblings  about the emerging terms of a ‘bad deal” waiting to be  confirmed in the final terms of the March 24th agreement between the P5+1 and the Islamic Republic.  All with the backing of  the Obama Administration seeking to  provide this as legacy to America, Israel and the World caught up confronting the Islamic State threat roiling the Middle East and  the West.  The WaPo editorial analysis of  the bad deal  being fashioned in those weekly talks between Kerry and Zarif  may not bode well for Democratic prospects in 2016.  

Here is the Washington Post View, “The emerging Iran nuclear deal raises major concerns:

By Editorial Board February 5

 

AS THE Obama administration pushes to complete a nuclear accord with Iran, numerous members of Congress, former secretaries of state and officials of allied governments are expressing concern about the contours of the emerging deal. Though we have long supported negotiations with Iran as well as the interim agreement the United States and its allies struck with Tehran, we share several of those concerns and believe they deserve more debate now — before negotiators present the world with a fait accompli.

The problems raised by authorities ranging from Henry Kissinger, the country’s most senior former secretary of state, to Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, Virginia’s junior Democratic senator, can be summed up in three points:

?First, a process that began with the goal of eliminating Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons has evolved into a plan to tolerate and restrict that capability.

?Second, in the course of the negotiations, the Obama administration has declined to counter increasingly aggressive efforts by Iran to extend its influence across the Middle East and seems ready to concede Tehran a place as a regional power at the expense of Israel and other U.S. allies.

?Finally, the Obama administration is signaling that it will seek to implement any deal it strikes with Iran — including the suspension of sanctions that were originally imposed by Congress — without seeking a vote by either chamber. Instead, an accord that would have far-reaching implications for nuclear proliferation and U.S. national security would be imposed unilaterally by a president with less than two years left in his term.

The first and broadest of these problems was outlined by Mr. Kissinger in recent testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The talks, he pointed out, began as a multilateral effort headed by the European Union and backed by six U.N. Security Council resolutions intended “to deny Iran the capability to develop a military nuclear option.” Though formally the multilateral talks continue, “these negotiations have now become an essentially bilateral negotiation” between the United States and Iran “over the scope of that [nuclear] capability, not its existence,” Mr. Kissinger said.

Where it once aimed to eliminate Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, the administration now appears ready to accept an infrastructure of thousands of Iranian centrifuges. It says its goal is to limit and monitor that industrial base so that Iran could not produce the material for a warhead in less than a year. As several senators pointed out during the hearing, the prospective deal would leave Iran as a nuclear threshold state, while theoretically giving the world time to respond if Tehran chose to build a weapon. Even these limited restrictions would remain in force for only a specified number of years, after which Iran would be free to expand its production of potential bomb materials.

Mr. Kissinger said such an arrangement would very likely prompt other countries in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey, to match Iran’s threshold capability. “The impact .?.?. will be to transform the negotiations from preventing proliferation to managing it,” he said. “We will live in a proliferated world in which everybody — even if that agreement is maintained — will be very close to the trigger point.”

A related problem is whether Iran could be prevented from cheating on any arrangement and acquiring a bomb by stealth. Mr. Kaine pointed out that an attempt by the United States to negotiate the end of North Korea’s nuclear program failed after the regime covertly expanded its facilities. With Iran, said Mr. Kaine, “a nation that has proven to be very untrustworthy .?.?. the end result is more likely to be a North Korean situation” if existing infrastructure is not dismantled.

The administration at one time portrayed the nuclear negotiations as distinct from the problem of Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, its attempts to establish hegemony over the Arab Middle East and its declared goal of eliminating Israel. Yet while the talks have proceeded, Mr. Obama has offered assurances to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that the two countries have shared interests in the region, and the White House has avoided actions Iran might perceive as hostile — such as supporting military action against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

For their part, the Iranians, as Mr. Kaine put it, “are currently involved in activities to destabilize the governments of [U.S.-allied] nations as near as Bahrain and as far away as Morocco.” A Tehran-sponsored militia recently overthrew the U.S.-backed government of Yemen. Rather than contest the Iranian bid for regional hegemony, as has every previous U.S. administration since the 1970s, Mr. Obama appears ready to concede Iran a place in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and beyond — a policy that is viewed with alarm by Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, among other allies.

Former secretary of state George P. Shultz cited Iran’s regional aggression in pronouncing himself “very uneasy” about the ongoing negotiations. “They’ve already outmaneuvered us, in my opinion,” he told the Senate committee.

While presidents initiate U.S. foreign policies, it is vital that major shifts win the support of Congress and the country; otherwise, they will be unsustainable. Yet Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested in Senate testimony that the administration intends to postpone any congressional vote on a deal indefinitely, while meeting its commitments to Iran by using provisions allowing it to suspend legislatively enacted sanctions. Mr. Blinken conceded that the Iranian parliament would likely vote on any accord but said that Congress should act only “once Iran has demonstrated that it’s making good on its commitments.”

Such a unilateral course by Mr. Obama would alienate even his strongest congressional supporters. It would mean that a deal with Iran could be reversed within months of its completion by the next president. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Mr. Obama wishes to avoid congressional review because he suspects a bipartisan majority would oppose the deal he is prepared to make. If so, the right response to the questions now being raised is to seek better terms from Iran — or convince the doubters that a deal that blesses and preserves Iran’s nuclear potential is better than the alternatives.