Let's not kid ourselves. The 47 Senators (aka clowns) have no real concerns about Iran. Probably the majority of them would not be able to even find it on a map.
What these 47 politicians are concerned about is that the first black man elected President of the United States (twice) would succeed where those before him have failed.
In 2015, the opposition party is more interested in scoring political points than in practicing international diplomacy. Only seven Republican Senators put country ahead of party by not signing the letter. Senators Lamar Alexander (TN), Susan Collins (ME), Thad Cochran (MS), Dan Coats (IN), Jeff Flake (AZ), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Bob Corker (TN) did not sign the letter. The other 47 Republican Senators did.
Those 47 Senators are so intent on undermining the current President that they would rather see him fail than allow the White House to secure an agreement with Iran. Presidential contenders Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio may win the allegiance of anti-Obama voters with this maneuver, but they have also shown by meddling in the diplomatic process, that they are more interested in political posturing, than they are in working for the future safety and security of the American people.
Beyond the amusing inaccuracies about U.S. parliamentary order, it seems there are some features of the nuclear negotiations that the signatory senators don’t fully understand — not only on the terms of the deal, but also on who would be party to an agreement.
There are no negotiations on Iran’s “nuclear-weapons program” because the world’s intelligence agencies (including those of the U.S. and Israel) do not believe Iran is currently building nuclear weapons, nor has it made a strategic decision to use its civilian nuclear infrastructure to produce a bomb. An active Iranian nuclear-weapons program would render moot the current negotiations, because Iran would be in fundamental violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The current negotiations are focused on strengthening verifiable safeguards against weaponization over-and-above those required by the NPT, yet the Republican-led Congress, egged on by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is warning that those goals are insufficient, and the terms and time-frame of the deal are unacceptable.
The key element missing from the GOP Senators’ letter, however, is that the deal is not being negotiated between Iran and the United States; it is being negotiated between Iran and the P5+1 group, in which the U.S. is joined by Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. Even if the U.S. is the key player in that group, the deal being pursued reflects an international consensus — the same consensus that has made sanctions against Iran so effective.
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