Featured Republicans Admit: That Iran Letter Was a Dumb Idea

Yea, I'm interested to know what general American opinion on this will be, especially if it actually scuttles the negotiations. Was disappointed to see both KY Senators were in on this.

"A day after releasing a letter that potentially threatened the administration’s negotiations with Iran, some Republicans who signed on are realizing it was a bad call.

Behind the scenes, Republicans are wondering if sending an open letter to Iran’s leaders was the best strategy to keep a bad nuclear deal from being negotiated.....

....even among Republicans whose offices have signed the letter, there is some trepidation that the Iran letter injects partisanship into the Iran negotiations, shifting the narrative from the content of the deal to whether Republicans are unfairly trying to undercut the president.....

...Republican Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, did not sign the letter.

“I didn’t think it was going to further our efforts to get to a place where Congress would play the appropriate role that it should on Iran,” Corker told The Daily Beast. “I did not think that the letter was something that was going to help get us to an outcome that we’re all seeking, and that is Congress playing that appropriate role.”....

....“I immediately knew that it was not something that, for me anyway, in my particular role, was going to be constructive,” Corker said. “I didn’t realize until this weekend that it had the kind of momentum that it had.”

Sen. Jeff Flake was another Republican who declined to sign the letter, telling reporters Tuesday that there was already “a lot of animosity” between Congress and the White House, and that the Iranian nuclear threat was “too important to divide us among partisan lines.”

“I just didn’t feel that it was appropriate or productive at this point. These are tough enough negotiations as it stands, and introducing this kind of letter, I didn’t think would be helpful,” Flake said......"
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...s-admit-that-iran-letter-was-a-dumb-idea.html


IMHO, this attempt by the GOP congress 'to govern' has the potential to backfire on them come 2016 elections.

 

Iran Calls GOP Letter 'Propaganda Ploy,' Offers To 'Enlighten' Authors

"Republican senators' letter to Iran about ongoing nuclear talks has prompted a lengthy response from Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who delivered an overview of international law as he critiqued the letter.

Zarif said he was astonished by the letter, saying it suggests the U.S. lawmakers "not only do not understand international law" — a subject in which he is a professor — "but are not fully cognizant of the nuances of their own Constitution when it comes to presidential powers in the conduct of foreign policy," according to Iran's Foreign Ministry.

The Iranian minister said that "in our view, this letter has no legal value and is mostly a propaganda ploy."...

...The letter seemed to strike a nerve for Zarif, who moved to the U.S. as a teenager and holds a doctorate and two other advanced degrees from American universities....

...The senators cited the U.S. process of ratifying treaties in Congress and President Obama's term that expires in January of 2017...

...President Obama said, "I think it's somewhat ironic to see some members of Congress wanting to make common cause with the hard-liners in Iran" who are also against making a deal over Iran's nuclear program....

Zarif, noting that negotiations are ongoing and haven't yielded an agreement, said the U.S. lawmakers' "unconventional methods" show that they "are opposed to any agreement, regardless of its content."

Saying he hopes to "enrich the knowledge of the authors," Zarif said:

"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 fulfill the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations."

Zarif also noted that many previous international agreements the U.S. has been a party to have been "mere executive agreements," and not full treaties that received Senate ratification.

He said any deal on sanctions and Iran's nuclear program would not be bilateral; would require approval by the U.N. and the U.N. Security Council; and would not be subject to modification by Congress.

He added, "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."....

For a different perspective, Ailsa spoke to Richard Nephew, who was on U.S. teams negotiating with Iran during both the Bush and Obama administrations.

Nephew said, "The idea that a sitting group of senators of either party would write to the other side of a negotiation to say, 'Eh, don't sign a deal with these guys' — to me, it really smacks of a misplaced understanding of how the international system is supposed to work."..."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...r-propaganda-ploy-offers-to-enlighten-authors

Again, IMO, all this could come back and bite the Republicans later.

 

The Options

Excerpt from what I thought was overall an informative piece

9 questions about Iran’s nuclear program you were too embarrassed to ask November 25, 2013

"...8. So an Iranian nuclear weapon would be bad. What can the world do to stop it?

Not a lot. There are four bad options and one okay option.

The first bad option is to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, which probably wouldn't set Iran back more than a few months but would almost certainly make Tehran more likely to develop a nuclear weapon. This would also likely reduce international support for efforts to curb Iran's nuclear program.

The second bad option is a full-on invasion to topple the government. After the disastrous 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a country that is much smaller and weaker, this is quite simply not on the table.

The third bad option is to try to topple the government in other ways. But the Islamic Republic has survived tougher things than we can throw at them. Even in Iran's mass 2009 protests after the disputed presidential election, people were calling for the government to behave better, not for it to collapse outright. Any Western-led effort to topple the government is probably just going to deepen its popular support and make Iran more likely to want a nuclear weapon to protect itself.

The fourth bad option is to try to force Iran to surrender and simply give up its nuclear program. This would be the status quo. International sanctions have indeed taken a tremendous toll on Iran. Meanwhile, U.S. and Israeli efforts to sabotage the Iranian program, such as through cyber-attacks, have found some real successes. But Iran's nuclear program has continued to grow despite all these efforts. The world, it seems, can slow them but not stop them.

That brings us to option number five: negotiating a deal directly with Tehran. This is the direction that the world is moving in with this weekend's agreement. The goal is that Iran gets its dignity-affirming nuclear program, but with enough restrictions and inspections and limitations that the rest of the world can accept it as peaceful. The downside is that this would be difficult to enact, no deal will please everybody and, most pointedly, it requires trusting Iran with a nuclear program even though it has cheated on past agreements. The upside is that all of the other options are much worse...."

 

What kind of question is that? I want the administration to get a good deal and narrow-minded hothead ignoramuses won't even give the negotiations a chance to see what comes of them.

Those jockeying for war should have to be with the first wave in.

 

It makes absolutely no sense for the Republicans to be interfering at this moment. They could at least stay out of it until they see what the framework agreement is going to be, but they're blatantly trying to scuttle the negotiations now. Yes, I believe this will be used against them big time in catching the blame for no deal.