Iran

[DDF]

I don't know. People confuse racism with culture all of the time. It is a mistake to do so.

I have a very select few of Muslims (in Bashkortostan, Russia to be specific), that I am friends with. Other than that, I don't like them. There is a good reason why. I went base jumping at Mount Shakhan with them. We drove the way there, them making jokes about cutting off non muslim's heads. We were with an instructor from the military there, so there was no real danger (Muslims are obliged to serve in the Russian military as well), but the point being is that people avoid talking about multiculturalism due to skin tone being confused with it, in an effort to avoid being labeled as a racist.

Muslims do not share western culture. I know because I have read the Qu'ran AND lived amongst them, albeit in an area of Russia where radical Muslims are almost non existent.

I think we should embrace Iran having weapons, because as noted above, they will certainly use them sooner or later. Their beliefs dictate that they have to.

In then end, there will be a war of cultures and perhaps for water (that is another matter), and whatever brings it to a head, so that our progeny doesn't have to fight the same fight, I'm ok with.

Let them have the weapons, let them make war, and let western culture finish it. Unfortunately, many in society lack the stomach to effect such policies, but even in the Bible and the Torah, there are some things God just doesn't let go. I don't think He expects us to let them go either.

My thoughts.

[DougMacG]

Really no way to know if Iran is a terrorist nation bent on destroying the world until we test it (with nuclear weapons)

Gallows humor for Israel and the world.  Better analysis here than in most liberal publications. 

FOR

Creates room for some fresh new up-and-coming state sponsors of terrorism
Breathes new life into decades-old animosity between U.S. and Saudi Arabia
Nice to see John Kerry so engaged at work
Frees Iran to brainstorm all sorts of exciting, outside-the-box ways to destroy Israel
Fresh material for Rabbi Cohen’s sermon
Really no way to know if Iran is a terrorist nation bent on destroying the world until we test it
Just feels kind of empty without current U.S. military intervention in Muslim world

AGAINST

Zero people involved with this are to be trusted
Uranium only fun if enriched beyond 3.67 percent
Stand-your-ground provision allows Iran to fast-track construction of nuclear missile in event it feels at all threatened
Might lose the comfort and familiarity of unbearably high tensions in Middle East
Complete waste of perfectly good centrifuges
Possibility that closer cooperation will humanize Iranian people in Americans’ eyes
Not complete and utter surrender to demands of U.S.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://pamelageller.com/2015/07/u-s-will-teach-iran-to-thwart-israeli-threats-to-its-nuclear-program.html/

[G M]

http://pamelageller.com/2015/07/u-s-will-teach-iran-to-thwart-israeli-threats-to-its-nuclear-program.html/

No worries, bigdog says Iran is a rational actor.

[Crafty_Dog]

Forget Congress, Obama's Taking the Iran Deal to the UN
(http://patriotpost.us/posts/36421)

It took years to get other nations on board with sanctions against Iran, and
Barack Obama has done his best to undo all that work — for nothing in return
(http://patriotpost.us/articles/36405). Meanwhile, Congress tried to insert
itself into the process, but all it got was an empty political victory.
Congress now needs a two-thirds majority to disapprove of Obama's bad deal.
But it might not even matter, as Obama could essentially skip Congress
altogether. CNS News reports
(http://cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/obama-not-waiting-congress-review-iran-deal-going-un),
"Despite a legal obligation to allow Congress to review the Iran nuclear
agreement for 60 days, the Obama administration will press ahead with a U.N.
Security Council resolution enshrining the deal, likely within days."
According to Secretary of State John Kerry, implementation of the agreement
will begin "within 90 days of the UN Security Council endorsing the deal."
Obama has worked his deal, declared it's awesome, threatened to veto any
congressional measure of disapproval, and wants to get on with securing the
UN's seal of approval for his legacy-building enterprise. And yet he had the
temerity to say, "I welcome a robust debate in Congress on this issue and I
welcome scrutiny of the details of this agreement." As long as he can ignore
the debate, that is.

[ccp]

Does anyone REALLY think for one second Schumer won't vote the party Obama line???  If he did it wouldn't be until he was sure they have enough votes to keep the Senate from getting to 67 anyway.  The Dems stick together like a Roman phalynx:

Jul 16, 5:41 PM EDT

Sen. Schumer squeezed on Obama's Iran nuclear deal

By ERICA WERNER
Associated Press
   
WASHINGTON (AP) -- No sooner had President Barack Obama announced a nuclear deal with Iran than Sen. Chuck Schumer issued a statement pledging to go through it with a fine-tooth comb, talk with administration officials, listen to experts on all sides and carefully study it.

Everything, that is, except provide even a whisper of a hint of how he will vote on it.

It's a political straddle that reflects the 64-year-old New York senator's competing roles as next-in-line Senate Democratic leader, unquestioned congressional ally of Israel, leading fundraiser and strategist for his party, and lawmaker from a state that is home to more than a million-and-a-half Jews.

"Sen. Schumer is going to be instrumental in helping to determine where this lands," said Rep. Steve Israel, a fellow Jewish Democratic lawmaker from New York who's been an outspoken skeptic on the deal. As the White House lobbies senators to support the pact, "He's going to have a major role in determining where they end up."

Indeed, with the leaders of Israel and their supporters in the U.S. strongly opposed to the accord, observers on and off Capitol Hill say that the only chance congressional opponents have is if they get Schumer in their corner.

Sometime in the fall, Congress will vote on whether to approve or disapprove of the Iran deal. If enough hawkish Democrats join Republicans and the disapprove side prevails, Obama would veto the legislation.

At that point the focus would turn to whether Congress could override Obama's veto, which takes a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate. Chances of that are slim, but with Schumer on their side opponents might stand a chance.

"There is no way a veto would be overridden without Sen. Schumer," said Aaron Keyak, a consultant to several Jewish groups and former Democratic congressional aide. "Finding 67 votes to override a presidential veto is a very high threshold and there is no way to get to that number without Sen. Schumer."

That helps explain the intense pressures on Schumer and a handful of other key senators in a debate that pro-Israel groups have made clear will be their top focus, bar none, in the months to come.

With the deal just a few days old, Schumer is already being targeted in advertising, news releases and social media from both sides.

The Emergency Committee for Israel announced an ad campaign on New York City cable television encouraging New Yorkers to "Call Sen. Schumer and tell him he must stand firm" on his insistence that the deal allow nuclear inspections anytime and anywhere, which opponents contend it does not. Another group, Secure America Now, has been urging supporters over Twitter to call Schumer and tell him to oppose the deal.

On the opposite side, the progressive group Credo issued a statement warning that "Democrats who sabotage the Iran deal will face consequences," and listed Schumer, who likely will win re-election next year, as a top target. Adding to the pressure, the Democrats' likely presidential nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has cautiously embraced the deal.

At the middle of the storm, the famously media-friendly Schumer has gone uncharacteristically quiet. Questioned at an unrelated news conference this week, he repeated his initial written statement nearly word for word.

"I will sit down, I will read the agreement thoroughly, and then I'm going to speak with officials, administration officials, people all over, on all different sides," Schumer said. "This is a decision that shouldn't be made lightly, and I am going to just study this agreement and talk to people before I do anything else."

Congressional allies say Schumer seems genuinely torn.

"He's obviously got pressures and I assume he's going to do the right thing," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who is undecided and facing similar pressures. "There are very severe upsides and very severe downsides."

Obama argues the deal closes off Iran's pathway to a nuclear bomb for the next decade, and has challenged opponents to come up with an alternative. The liberal Jewish group J Street is backing the deal, and the group's vice president of government affairs, Dylan Williams, said Schumer risks angering progressive voters if he breaks with the White House.

"This deal is and will continue to be supported by an overwhelming majority of Sen. Schumer's Democratic base and if there is a political consideration here that would be the overriding one," Williams said.

But the powerful pro-Israel lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee is vehemently opposed to the deal, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is denouncing all over U.S. media as undermining the security of Israel and the region.

Steven J. Rosen, a former longtime senior official with the group, said that backing the deal could hurt Schumer with the pro-Israel community - and with donors in New York.

"I think he wants to be seen as one of Israel's most important friends in the United States. A bad vote here could have lasting damage on his standing in that regard," Rosen said. "The White House has put him in a very, very tough position here."

© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
 

   

[Crafty_Dog]

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/248225-cruz-threatens-to-block-nominees-funding-over-iran-maneuver

[G M]

[Crafty_Dog]

"STOP IRAN" PROTEST IN TIMES SQUARE

Steven Emerson, Executive Director

July 19, 2015
"STOP IRAN" PROTEST IN TIMES SQUARE
WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, AT 5:30 p.m

IPT News
July 19, 2015

http://www.investigativeproject.org/4915/stop-iran-protest-in-times-square


Thousands of Americans Rally to Demand Congress Vote Down Iran Nuke Deal

July 22, 2015 -- New York City -- The "STOP IRAN RALLY," the largest, grassroots
bipartisan American protest against the deal granting Iran a fast track to a nuclear
bomb, will be held in Times Square on Wednesday, July 22, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Thousands of Americans from all faith traditions, political interests and
communities, including Christians, Muslims, Jews, registered Democrats and
Republicans, LGBT, Iranian-Americans, and others will demand that Congress vote down
the Iran deal.

Under the umbrella of the STOP IRAN RALLY COALITION, more than 100 organizations
spanning the nation's political, religious and social spectrum will participate. A
roster of preeminent experts from senior levels of the military, government,
academic, and media establishments will speak at the rally.

"Strip away the administration's rhetoric and it's clear this deal gives the Mullahs
-- the world's foremost sponsors of terrorism, $150 billion in return for
effectively nothing: no dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program; no anytime or
anywhere inspections; no eradication of Iran's ballistic missile program; no
maintenance of the arms embargo; and no halt to Iran's sponsorship of terror," said
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, STOP IRAN RALLY's co-organizer.

Wiesenfeld added, "Washington is prepared to give Iran virtually all that it needs
to get to the bomb. To release $150 billion to Iran will result in the expansion of
worldwide terror. New York Senator Charles Schumer has the votes as presumptive
leader to override this deal if he wants. To do anything less is cynical and
disgraceful, and the public will not be fooled this time. Americans will not stand
for another North Korea. If this deal is not stopped, New York voters will know whom
to blame."

"The Administration uses scare tactics in falsely claiming that the alternative to
this deal is war," said Steve Emerson, Executive Director of The Investigative
Project on Terrorism and a speaker at the STOP IRAN RALLY. "This deal would actually
lead to more war, many more deaths of Americans and our allies and much more
international terrorism."

"This is a bipartisan issue, not a political one," said Richard Allen, a local
activist leading the STOP IRAN RALLY volunteers. "Now, Congress must rise to the
occasion and expose evisceration of U.S. national security and pass a resolution of
disapproval. Congress must also override President Obama's threatened veto, and
return America's Iran policy to dealing from a position of strength rather than
appeasement. We are mobilizing nationwide to let our lawmakers know we will hold
each and every one of them to account for the consequences of this dangerous deal
being foisted on the American people."

SPEAKERS AT THE "STOP IRAN" RALLY WILL INCLUDE:

* James Woolsey, Former Director of the CIA and Chairman of the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies
* Gov. George Pataki, Former Three-Term Governor of New York
* Robert Morgenthau, Manhattan District Attorney from 1975 to 2009, and Of Counsel,
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz
* Allen West, Former Congressman and retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel
* Prof. Alan Dershowitz, Attorney and Professor at the Harvard School of Law
* Pete Hoekstra, Former U.S. Congressman and Chair of the House Intelligence Committee
* U.S. Navy Admiral James A. "Ace" Lyons, Former Commander in Chief of the U.S.
Pacific Fleet and Senior U.S. Military Representative to the United Nations
* General Paul E. Vallely, Former U.S. Army Major General and Chairman of Stand Up
America
* Mortimer Zuckerman, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of U.S. News & World Report and
the publisher of the New York Daily News and former Chairman of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
* John Batchelor, Radio Talk Host, WABC-AM
* Steven Emerson, Executive Director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism
* David Brog, Executive Director, Christians United for Israel
* Frank Gaffney, Founder of the Center for Security Policy
* Caroline Glick, Deputy Managing Editor of The Jerusalem Post
* Kasim Hafeez, Founder of "The Israel Campaign" and Christians United for Israel's
Outreach Coordinator
* Tony LoBianco, Actor and Activist
* Clare M. Lopez, Former CIA officer, Terrorism and Iran Expert at Center for
Security Policy
* Herbert I. London, President Emeritus of Hudson Institute and former Dean of New
York University
* Colonel Richard Kemp, Former Commander of the British Forces in Afghanistan
* Genevieve Wood, Senior Fellow, The Heritage Foundation

SUPPORTING QUOTES:

"Whatever happened to the President's claim that 'No (Iran) deal is better than a
bad deal?' Well, this is a bad deal. Now is the time for the American Congress to
stand up and protect the security of the American people and our future generations.
This is a pivotal moment in American history. Will our leaders rise above politics
and demonstrate the courage to do what is right for our country?" -- Jeffrey
Wiesenfeld, co-organizer of the STOP IRAN RALLY

"The President publicly asserts that the U. S. 'will maintain our own sanctions
related to Iran's support for terrorism, its ballistic missile program, and its
human rights violations.' In reality, this deal removes the most severe terrorist
sanctions in place against Iran for years; it removes the embargo on weapons sales
to Iran against the explicit warnings of our own Secretary of Defense and head of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff; it allows for Iran to continue developing its
intercontinental ballistic missile program that can only have one mission --
attaching nuclear warheads; it provides Iran with billions of unfrozen assets that
Iran will surely pour into worldwide terrorism as it has done for 30 years; and it
shamefully decouples any linkage to Iran's continuing imprisonment of an American
Marine and four other American civilians not to mention its brutal suppression and
execution of its own dissidents.

This deal would enable Iran to spend tens of billions of new dollars on its vast
state supported terrorist apparatus: from its Iranian Revolutionary Guards who have
been responsible for killing hundreds of Americans to supplying their Hezbollah
terrorist proxies with vast amounts of sophisticated weapons to threaten American
interest and allies throughout the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Latin America." --
Steve Emerson, Executive Director, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Speaker at
Stop Iran Rally

"This is a good deal for Iran. Not the American people. This deal abandons every red
line the administration said was essential for any acceptable deal to block all
pathways to an Iranian bomb. If Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of
terrorism, wants to be treated with 'respect,' let them earn it by agreeing to
robust spot inspections, ending their missile programs and proving to us that they
mean no harm." -- Richard Allen, Co-organizer, STOP IRAN RALLY

ABOUT STOP IRAN RALLY ORGANIZERS:

The STOP IRAN RALLY is coordinated by the STOP IRAN RALLY COALITION, a grassroots
movement of volunteer citizens, in partnership with more than 100 organizations
spanning the entire political, religious and social spectrum. More information can
be found at www.stopiranrally.org. Follow updates about the rally on Twitter
@stopiranrally and #stopiranrally.

LOCATION AND TIME:

Wednesday, July 22, 2015 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Times Square, at 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue

MEDIA INQUIRIES AND INTERVIEWS CONTACT:

Eve Epstein, 516-343-0543516-343-0543; [email protected]

Sakura Amend, 917-355-3531917-355-3531; [email protected]

[Crafty_Dog]

   

    The agreement states: Co-operation…to strengthen Iran's ability to prevent, protect and respond to nuclear security threats to nuclear facilities and to protect against… sabotage.
    By: Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu
    “ObamaDeal” explicitly states that the United States and the other P5+1 powers can help Iran deflect and even “respond” to sabotage and nuclear threats to its nuclear sites.

    The damming evidence that ObamaDeal directly allows Western powers to help Iran to protect its nuclear sites, and possibly even to stage a counter-attack on the source of the threat, is stated in Annex III of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Congress is reviewing the agreement and has the option to cancel America’s commitments under the deal.

    You have to reach page 142 of the JCPOA until you reach “Annex III: Civil Nuclear Cooperation,” where Section “D 10 states that the P5+1 “and possibly other states are prepared to cooperate with Iran on the implementation of nuclear security guidelines and best practices. Cooperation in the following areas can be envisaged:

    Co-operation in the form of training courses and workshops to strengthen Iran’s ability to prevent, protect and respond to nuclear security threats to nuclear facilities and systems as well as to enable effective and sustainable nuclear security and physical protection systems [boldface added];

    Co-operation through training and workshops to strengthen Iran’s ability to protect against, and respond to nuclear security threats, including sabotage, as well as to enable effective and sustainable nuclear security and physical protection systems.

    Emphasis should be placed on the word “respond.” It leaves open for interpretation the possibility that the United States and other P5 +1 countries can take action in the form of training and preparing Iran to stage a cyber attack or retaliation in the event of a third-party assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

    Israel is assumed to have been behind the Stuxnet cyber attacks on Iran’s centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility in 2010, which set back the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The agreement provides for assistance from the United States and the other P5+1 countries to thwart “sabotage” on Iran’s nuclear sites.

    Al Jazeera reported earlier this year that President Barack Obama threatened Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in 2014 that he would order American fighter planes to down Israeli aircraft if the Israeli Air Force tried to carry out an attack, which reportedly was about to happen.

    If (or when) it was discovered that Iran has cheated and is close to developing a nuclear weapon, the complicated review methods in the agreement could take several months or even a year before the United States and other P5+1 nations could prove their findings. In the meantime, Israel could be met by the United States as well as Iran as enemies in the event of an attempt to sabotage or attack the sites where Iran violated the agreement.

    Even without the agreement, Iran is on the way to receiving from Russia, one of the P5+1 powers, S-300 anti-missile systems that could possibly deter any Israeli missile attack on Iranian nuclear sites, in which Russia has a heavy investment.

    Prime Minister Netanyahu has argued that ObamaDeal not only does not prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon but actually paves the way for a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic.

    But the agreement does more than that. It helps make Iran impervious to an attack, whether from the air or from cyber space, and ObamaDeal also ratifies a possible Iranian counter-attack on Israel

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM4KsKLKF_A&feature=youtu.be

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/259529/kerry-iran-cant-use-140-billion-sanctions-relief-daniel-greenfield

[Crafty_Dog]

third post of the day

http://www.thediplomad.com/2015/07/the-great-con-iran-deal.html

[Crafty_Dog]

4th post of the day:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-inspections-in-24-days-not-even-close-1437521911

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/192364/hillary-clinton-important-decision?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=aa4b5c506b-7_23_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-aa4b5c506b-207194629

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.vice.com/read/the-boring-chinese-businessman-accused-of-selling-ballistic-missile-parts-to-iran-722?utm_source=vicefbus

[Crafty_Dog]

By
David B. Rivkin Jr. And
Lee A. Casey
July 26, 2015 6:32 p.m. ET
294 COMMENTS

The Iranian nuclear agreement announced on July 14 is unconstitutional, violates international law and features commitments that President Obama could not lawfully make. However, because of the way the deal was pushed through, the states may be able to derail it by enacting their own Iran sanctions legislation.

President Obama executed the nuclear deal as an executive agreement, not as a treaty. While presidents have used executive agreements to arrange less-important or temporary matters, significant international obligations have always been established through treaties, which require Senate consent by a two-thirds majority.

The Constitution’s division of the treaty-making power between the president and Senate ensured that all major U.S. international undertakings enjoyed broad domestic support. It also enabled the states to make their voices heard through senators when considering treaties—which are constitutionally the “supreme law of the land” and pre-empt state laws.

The Obama administration had help in its end-run around the Constitution. Instead of insisting on compliance with the Senate’s treaty-making prerogatives, Congress enacted the Iran Nuclear Agreement Act of 2015. Known as Corker-Cardin, it surrenders on the constitutional requirement that the president obtain a Senate supermajority to go forward with a major international agreement. Instead, the act effectively requires a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress to block elements of the Iran deal related to U.S. sanctions relief. The act doesn’t require congressional approval for the agreement as a whole.

Last week the U.N. Security Council endorsed the Iran deal. The resolution, adopted under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, legally binds all member states, including the U.S. Given the possibility that Congress could summon a veto-proof majority to block the president’s ability to effect sanctions relief, the administration might be unable to comply with the very international obligations it has created. This is beyond reckless.

On March 11 Secretary of State John Kerry defended the administration’s decision not to take the treaty route with Iran, saying it had “been clear from the beginning we’re not negotiating a legally binding plan.” The Security Council gambit has enabled the administration, without Senate consent, to bind the U.S. under international law.

The U.N. Charter resolution has trapped the U.S. into a position where it can renounce its obligations only at the cost of being branded an international lawbreaker. The president has thus handed the legal high ground to Tehran and made undoing the deal by his successor much more difficult and costly.

Yet the nuclear agreement’s legitimacy in international law is far from clear. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide imposes an affirmative obligation on all convention parties to prevent genocide and threats of genocide. Iran remains publicly committed to Israel’s elimination, an unequivocal threat of genocide in violation of the Convention.

Since nuclear weapons delivered by ballistic missiles are the most likely means by which Iran could implement its genocidal policy, an agreement that calls for lifting the Security Council resolutions banning the sale of ballistic missiles to Iran after eight years—as this nuclear deal does—also seems to contravene the genocide convention.

A further legal complication: Even if Congress doesn’t vote to bar President Obama from lifting sanctions on Iran, the president still wouldn’t be able to deliver fully on the deal’s unprecedented sanctions-lifting commitments. They were promised regardless of any future Iranian aggression in the region, sponsorship of terrorist acts or other misconduct.

Some of the U.S. statutes allow the president to lift certain sanctions on Iran. But many of the most important sanctions—including sanctions against Iran’s central bank—cannot be waived unless the president certifies that Iran has stopped its ballistic-missile program, ceased money-laundering and no longer sponsors international terrorism. He certainly can’t do that now, and nothing in the deal forces Iran to take either step. The Security Council’s blessing of the nuclear agreement has no bearing on these U.S. sanctions.

The administration faces another serious problem because the deal requires the removal of state and local Iran-related sanctions. That would have been all right if Mr. Obama had pursued a treaty with Iran, which would have bound the states, but his executive-agreement approach cannot pre-empt the authority of the states.

That leaves the states free to impose their own Iran-related sanctions, as they have done in the past against South Africa and Burma. The Constitution’s Commerce Clause prevents states from imposing sanctions as broadly as Congress can. Yet states can establish sanctions regimes—like banning state-controlled pension funds from investing in companies doing business with Iran—powerful enough to set off a legal clash over American domestic law and the country’s international obligations. The fallout could prompt the deal to unravel.

For now, though, we are left with another reminder from the administration that brought ObamaCare: Constitutional shortcuts almost invariably lead to bad policy outcomes.

Messrs. Rivkin and Casey are constitutional lawyers at Baker Hostetler LLP and served in the Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Mr. Rivkin is also a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
Popular on WSJ

[Crafty_Dog]

View from the top. During a long, and at times contentious, Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey admitted some deep disagreements with the White House over Iran policy. One big argument the chief lost was over lifting sanctions on weapons and ballistic missile shipments to Iran as part of the nuclear deal reached earlier this month. He opposed it, but the provisions made it into the final agreement anyway. He also rejected President Barack Obama’s July 15 statement that, “Without a deal, we risk even more war in the Middle East.” Dempsey flatly told Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) that “at no time did that come up in our conversation, nor did I make that comment.”

[Crafty_Dog]

http://nypost.com/2015/08/01/iran-publishes-book-on-how-to-outwit-us-and-destroy-israel/

[G M]

http://nypost.com/2015/08/01/iran-publishes-book-on-how-to-outwit-us-and-destroy-israel/

Wait, I thought they were our partners in peace?

[Crafty_Dog]

y
Tom Cotton And
Mike Pompeo
Aug. 2, 2015 5:40 p.m. ET
209 COMMENTS

For those of us who are elected officials, few votes will be more consequential than whether to approve or disapprove the nuclear agreement President Obama has reached with Iran. Yet the president expects Congress to cast this vote without the administration’s fully disclosing the contents of the deal to the American people. This is unacceptable and plainly violates the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act—a law the president signed only weeks ago.

During a recent trip to Vienna to meet with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the organization charged with verifying Iran’s compliance, we learned that certain elements of this deal are—and will remain—secret. According to the IAEA, those involved with the negotiations, including the Obama administration, agreed to allow Iran to forge the secret side deals with the IAEA on two issues.

The first governs the IAEA’s inspection of the Parchin military complex, the facility long suspected as the site of Iran’s long-range ballistic-missile and nuclear-weapons development. The second addresses what—if anything—Iran will be required to disclose about the past military dimensions of its nuclear program.

Yet the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act specifically says that Congress must receive all nuclear agreement documents, including any related to agreements “entered into or made between Iran and any other parties.” It expressly includes “side agreements.” This requirement is not strictly limited to agreements to which the U.S. is a signatory. This law passed in May, well before the nuclear negotiations ended. The Obama administration should have held firm in negotiations to obtain what was necessary for Congress to review the agreement. Iran, not the U.S., should have conceded on this point.

Weaponization lies at the heart of our dispute with Iran and is central to determining whether this deal is acceptable. Inspections of Parchin are necessary to ensure that Iran is adhering to its end of the agreement. Without knowing this baseline, inspectors cannot properly evaluate Iran’s compliance. It’s like beginning a diet without knowing your starting weight. That the administration would accept side agreements on these critical issues—and ask the U.S. Congress to do the same—is irresponsible.

The response from the administration to questions about the side deals has brought little reassurance. At first the administration refrained from acknowledging their existence. Unable to sustain that position, National Security Adviser Susan Rice said on July 22 during a White House press briefing that the administration “knows” the “content” of the arrangements and would brief Congress on it.

Yet the same day Secretary of State John Kerry, in a closed-door briefing with members of Congress, said he had not read the side deals. And on July 29 when pressed in a Senate hearing, Mr. Kerry admitted that a member of his negotiating team “may” have read the arrangements but he was not sure.

That person, Undersecretary of State and lead negotiator Wendy Sherman, on July 30 said in an interview on MSNBC, “I saw the pieces of paper but wasn’t allowed to keep them. All of the members of the P5+1 did in Vienna, and so did some of my experts who certainly understand this even better than I do.”

A game of nuclear telephone and hearsay is simply not good enough, not for a decision as grave as this one. The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act says Congress must have full access to all nuclear-agreement documents—not unverifiable ‎accounts from Ms. Sherman or others of what may or may not be in the secret side deals.‎How else can Congress, in good conscience, vote on the overall deal?

On July 30 we sent a letter to the Obama administration asking for a “complete and thorough assessment of the separate arrangements” and the names of anyone who has reviewed them. Iran’s ayatollahs have access to the side agreements. The American people’s representatives in the U.S. Congress should too.

When he announced his nuclear deal with Iran on July 14, President Obama said, “This deal is not built on trust, it is built on verification.” Those words are hollow unless Congress receives the full text of all documents related to the nuclear agreement.

Mr. Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mr. Pompeo, a Republican from Kansas, is a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

[DougMacG]

If you believe Iran is going to comply with the terms of the 'treaty' if we do approve it but then if the US votes it down, Iran will have to comply with the terms of it anyway.

Iran will still want the sanctions dropped by Russia, China, Germany, Britain, the UN etc. even if the US doesn't join in and drop ours.  They are not going to turn down all that money and trade with all those other countries over a rebuke by the US Congress.  Even US companies would face no prosecution by this administration for violating old law they don't agree with.

We've gone from 'leading from behind' to just being irrelevant.
--------------------------------------------------

The agreement with Iran is not a treaty because ... ... ... ... ... . (?)

[objectivist1]

Obama: Rockets will fall on Tel Aviv if Congress kills Iran nuke deal

AUGUST 5, 2015 11:25 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER

As if this deal would prevent that. And would the rockets come from Iran or the U.S.?

Seriously, this posturing about being pro-Israel after agreeing to a deal that severely compromises Israel’s security is obscene.

“Obama tells US Jews: Rockets will fall on Tel Aviv if Congress kills Iran nuclear deal,” by Michael Wilner and Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post, August 5, 2015 (thanks to Blazing Cat Fur):

WASHINGTON — Rockets would fall on Tel Aviv and Israel would “bear the burden” of a US military attack on Iran that would result from a scuttling of the Iran nuclear deal, US President Barack Obama told a delegation of Jewish leaders at the White House on Tuesday.

The meeting, held in the Cabinet Room for over two hours, featured a passionate president intent on winning over skeptics of the signature agreement. The nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is intended to cap, restrict, monitor and partially roll back Iran’s nuclear work for a fifteen year period in exchange for sanctions relief.

According to Greg Rosenbaum, the chairman of the National Jewish Democratic Council and one of nearly two dozen heads of Jewish organizations in the meeting, when one of the participants took umbrage with Obama’s characterization of those who are opposed to the deal as warmongers, Obama launched into an explanation of why he believed that the rejection of the deal would ultimately lead to a US military attack. Obama said that if Congress rejected the deal, the Iranians would walk away from negotiations, and he would be under intense pressure to take military action.

This, Rosenbaum quoted Obama as saying, would be disastrous for Israel and the US.

Iran, with its annual $15 billion military budget, would not go to war with the US, with a defense budget of nearly $600 billion a year, but would fight an “asymmetrical” war, the president said.

Another participant in the meeting, Robert Wexler, president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, confirmed the conversation. Obama noted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s support for the invasion of Iraq, as well as his skepticism over the JPOA, an interim nuclear accord that was in place during the negotiations, he said.

“He approached it in a lawyerly fashion,” Wexler said, who thought some minds may have been changed during the meeting.

But yet a third participant disagreed. Few skeptics were converted, he said, noting that nearly half of the meeting focused on the president’s tone in describing critics of the agreement.

“He acknowledged how people in Israel and people who love Israel are deeply concerned and skeptical. He wasn’t dismissive of that,” the third source said, who requested anonymity to express frankness.

Several figures in the room questioned Obama’s equating skeptics of the deal as “neocons” responsible for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. “He said he would be sensitive and careful about this,” the source said. “But recognizing that it makes folks uncomfortable, he basically said he really does believe that a rejection of the agreement would lead to war.”

Rosenbaum, who supports the deal, said that Obama mentioned the possibility of suicide speed boats ramming into a US aircraft carrier, but that Israel would “bear the brunt of the burden” and rockets would fall on Tel Aviv.

Referring to AIPAC plans to spend some $20 million in a public campaign against the deal, Obama said that it was that organization’s right to lobby Congress, but the arguments must be made on the merits of the case, and should not be personal, including attacks on other Jews who supported the deal.

If the attacks turn personal, he cautioned, then it would weaken the American Jewish community and as a result the strength of the US-Israel relationship. Rosenbaum said that he himself spoke at the meeting about how his organization, which supports the accord, received extremely hateful messages from other Jews opposed to the deal.

Obama, according to Rosenbaum, bewailed that AIPAC brought some 600 people to Washington last friday to lobby Congress against the accord, but were willing to give White House officials only some 30 minutes to meet with the group. Then, the president said, the lobbyists gave fact sheets to the congressmen that he said were factually incorrect.

The result, Obama complained, was that he then had to spend 45 minutes with each congressman disputing AIPAC’s claims.

Obama, who was accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden as well as key advisors such as Ben Rhodes, met with the group for more than two hours and, according to Rosenbaum, spoke at the outset for 20 minutes, going through the history of the deal.

Obama said that when he came into office he came in with three guiding principles on the Mideast: that Iran not achieve a nuclear bomb, that the “unbreakable”bond [sic] with Israel be made even stronger, and that the US achieve its foreign policy objectives through diplomacy, not military action….

And he has failed abysmally at all three.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/08/05/u-s-has-photographic-proof-iran-is-trying-to-cheat-on-the-nuclear-deal/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

[DougMacG]

Does that mean that everything Pres. Obama said about Republicans applies to the de facto Dem leader of the Senate?

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/06/politics/chuck-schumer-oppose-iran-nuclear-deal/

[ccp]

I admit I am shocked that Schumer will oppose Brock.   Where does the Hill stand on this issue of the deal?

If and only if enough  Dems oppose the deal to get to the magic number of 67 to override a bamster veto will I really say I was wrong about Schumer.  If they don't than his nay means nothing to me and was just a show time vote knowing full well Obama would win in the end.

[G M]

Obama: Rockets will fall on Tel Aviv




“Obama tells US Jews: Rockets will fall on Tel Aviv.

Fixed it!

[ccp]

"“Obama tells US Jews: Rockets will fall on Tel Aviv"

Instead nuclear warheads will drop on Tel Aviv some day.

Thanks BROCK.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-10/white-house-should-leave-politics-out-of-iran-deal

[ccp]

I am not sure how a normal person could not read this and wonder what kind of organic brain disorder this woman suffers from but I post because this is one of the crazy liberals we are dealing with:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/baseless-hatred---the-sum_b_7972338.html

[Crafty_Dog]

By
Orde Kittrie
Aug. 12, 2015 6:39 p.m. ET
116 COMMENTS

President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry claim that Congress has only two options for the Iran nuclear agreement: Approve it as is, or block it, and war results. Last week Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) recommended a third option, to renegotiate the agreement. Noting the Iran deal’s many weaknesses, Mr. Schumer called for the U.S. government to strengthen sanctions and “pursue the hard-trodden path of diplomacy once more, difficult as it may be.”

This is a nonstarter for the administration. Mr. Obama warns that failure to approve the deal as is means that America will lose its “credibility as a leader of diplomacy,” indeed “as the anchor of the international system.” Mr. Kerry asserts that refusing to approve the deal would be inconsistent with “the traditional relationship” that has existed “between the executive and Congress.”

Nonetheless, Congress has flatly rejected international agreements signed by the executive branch at least 130 times in U.S. history. Twenty-two treaties were voted down. According to 1987 and 2001 Congressional Research Service reports, the Senate has permanently blocked at least 108 other treaties by refusing to vote on them.

Moreover, the 1987 CRS report and an earlier study in the American Journal of International Law note that more than 200 treaties agreed by the executive branch were subsequently modified with Senate-required changes before receiving Senate consent and finally entering into force (examples below).

In the case of treaties, as the Senate website explains, the Senate may “make its approval conditional” by including in the resolution of ratification amendments, reservations, declarations, and understandings (statements that clarify or elaborate agreement provisions but do not alter them). “The president and the other countries involved must then decide whether to accept the conditions . . . in the legislation, renegotiate the provisions, or abandon the treaty.”


The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which Mr. Obama signed in May, does not contain a provision for approval subject to conditions. However, a resolution of disapproval or separate legislation could specify what changes would be needed to meet congressional requirements. Since Congress can under the law reject the nuclear agreement outright, Iran and our negotiating partners should not be surprised if Congress takes the less drastic step of returning it to the president for renegotiation.

The historical precedents for Congress rejecting, or requiring changes to, agreements involve treaties or other legally binding international agreements. The Iran deal, formally titled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is unsigned and not legally binding. Mr. Kerry has repeatedly referred to it as a “political agreement.” Nonbinding, unsigned political agreements receive less deference and are considered more flexible than treaties or other legally binding international agreements. Congress should be comfortable sending one back for renegotiation.

Several treaties that the Senate required be modified before ratification were with the Soviet Union. For example, the Threshold Test Ban Treaty and the Peaceful Nuclear Explosion Treaty, both of which entered into force in 1990, had been blocked by senators who insisted on new provisions enhancing the U.S. ability to verify Soviet compliance. The Senate consented to ratification only after the two treaties were each augmented by new U.S.-Soviet side agreements making it easier for the U.S. to detect Soviet cheating. These renegotiations succeeded despite the fact that the Soviet Union, with its nuclear-armed missiles pointed at U.S. cities, had far more leverage than Iran does now.

The Obama administration has itself already renegotiated at least one international agreement in response to congressional opposition. In January 2009, the U.S. secretary of state and the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates signed a nuclear cooperation agreement. Some in Congress, including Rep. Howard Berman (D., Calif.), then House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, objected that the agreement didn’t ensure that the U.A.E. wouldn’t follow Iran’s footsteps and engage in uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing.

The Obama administration reopened the negotiations and by May 2009 had extracted from the U.A.E. a legally binding commitment not to engage in enrichment and reprocessing. The revised agreement soon entered into force.

In many other cases, the Senate has insisted on conditioning its consent to agreements even when they included numerous other participating countries. In 1997, the Senate resolution approving a modification to the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty with 22 participating countries (including Russia) contained 14 conditions, two of which addressed verification and compliance. The 1997 Senate resolution approving the Chemical Weapons Convention, with 87 participating countries, contained 28 conditions, many relating to verification and compliance. Neither agreement was derailed by the Senate’s conditions.

As Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge said many years ago, a Senate amendment to a treaty is “offered at a later stage of the negotiation by the other part of the American treaty-making power.”

Presidents typically resist when Congress sends them back to the negotiating table. As a 2001 CRS report put it, they regularly claim that an agreement “has been so delicately negotiated that the slightest change . . . would unbalance the package and kill the treaty.” That has not been true in an overwhelming majority of cases.

The Iran nuclear deal could be significantly improved by a supplementary agreement containing amendments and understandings designed to mitigate the deal’s key gaps and ambiguities regarding verification and compliance. This step would be consistent with the Constitution, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act and past U.S. diplomatic practice, and would be no surprise to the international community.

Mr. Kittrie is a law professor at Arizona State University, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former lead State Department attorney for nuclear affairs.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/08/12/36-retired-top-ranking-military-officers-just-told-congress-to-back-obama-on-iran-deal/

[ccp]

What an admission of weakness!   

"There is no better option to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon. Military action would be less effective than the deal, assuming it is fully implemented. If the Iranians cheat, our advanced technology, intelligence and the inspections will reveal it, and U.S. military options remain on the table. And if the deal is rejected by America, the Iranians could have a nuclear weapon within a year. The choice is that stark."

Well yeah it is stark.  We've said on this board the only way to stop them is military.  "assuming it is fully implemented".  We know it will not be.   We know this will not stop them.  If they are only a year away this deal will certainly not stop them from finishing what they spent decades working towards now at the last second.

For God's sake stop yanking our F'in chains.  Ain't it obvious the military and Obama have decided to let them get a weapon and try containment?

This deal is a last second desperate waste of time.

Will Israel alone be able to do it?  Probably not.

We all lose with a nuclear Iran.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/middle-east/idUSKCN0QL0CV20150816

[G M]

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/middle-east/idUSKCN0QL0CV20150816

More money to do all the wonderful things they do! What could go wrong?

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/israel-must-be-obliterated-new-iranian-video-imagines-muslim-invasion-of-jerusalem/?omhide=true&utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=New+Iranian+Video+Imagines+Muslim+Invasion+of+Jerusalem&utm_campaign=20150818_m127003142_8%2F19+Breaking+Israel+Video%3A+New+Iranian+Video+Imagines+Muslim+Invasion+of+Jerusalem&utm_term=New+Iranian+Video+Imagines+Muslim+Invasion+of+Jerusalem

[G M]

http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/israel-must-be-obliterated-new-iranian-video-imagines-muslim-invasion-of-jerusalem/?omhide=true&utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=New+Iranian+Video+Imagines+Muslim+Invasion+of+Jerusalem&utm_campaign=20150818_m127003142_8%2F19+Breaking+Israel+Video%3A+New+Iranian+Video+Imagines+Muslim+Invasion+of+Jerusalem&utm_term=New+Iranian+Video+Imagines+Muslim+Invasion+of+Jerusalem

New partners in peace!

[ccp]

New report the UN will allow Iran to inspect themselves at least at one site.

The whole "deal" is a total sham.

It is a facade trying to hide the reality that military option is really off not on the table and a saving face attempt rather than admit Iran will get nuclear weapons. 

The worst part is Obama's efforts to isolate Israel.

[Crafty_Dog]

"New report the UN will allow Iran to inspect themselves at least at one site."

Maybe they got the idea by lurking here, where we reported this a couple of weeks ago , , ,

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.clarionproject.org/news/bombshell-un-allow-iran-inspect-own-military-sites#

[Crafty_Dog]

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/20/wave-anti-iran-deal-tv-ads-organized-saudi-arabian-lobbyist/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/27/us-iran-nuclear-iaea-idUSKCN0QW1M720150827

[G M]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/27/us-iran-nuclear-iaea-idUSKCN0QW1M720150827

No way. They gave us a solemn promise.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://allenbwest.com/2015/08/well-this-is-embarrassing-look-who-wont-back-iran-deal/

[ccp]

"Wait a second… did hell just freeze over? An area where we actually AGREE with DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz? (Even if her move was purely to protect her own political future with her largely Jewish constituency in South Florida.)"

Obviously Schultz does what is good for the Party and herself so 2 explanations come to mind one being that it is to protect her own political future (though I still don't believe most Jews will abandon the party no matter what) and the other making for Hillary who may come out as more of a hawk on the issue.  It is all about protecting the felon now and the Party.  Less so much Brock.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.facebook.com/SenatorTomCotton/videos/486562241505316/

[DougMacG]

Andrew McCarthy had a column Saturday asserting that Republicans still have the power to stop this.  (Others disagree, see Powerlineblog.com)

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423613/obama-iran-deal-kill

by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY   September 5, 2015 4:00 AM

The review process under the Corker law never began — by the law’s own terms.

To undermine President Obama’s atrocious Iran deal despite the Republican-controlled Congress’s irresponsible Corker legislation, it will be necessary to follow, of all things, the Corker legislation.

On Wednesday, Barbara Mikulski became the 34th Senate Democrat to announce support for the deal, which lends aid and comfort to a regime that continues to call for “Death to America.” Under the Corker Roadmap to Catastrophe, Mikulski’s assent ostensibly puts President Obama over the top. After all, the legislation sponsored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) and other Beltway GOP leaders reverses the Constitution’s presumptions against international agreements that harm national security. In essence, Corker requires dissenters from the Iran pact to round up a two-thirds supermajority opposition in both congressional chambers (67 senators and 290 House members). If the Constitution were followed, the burden would be on the president to convince either 67 senators to support a treaty, or majorities of both chambers to make the pact legally binding through ordinary legislation.

Mikulski’s announcement meant that dissenters would now be able to muster no more than 66 Senate votes against the deal. In fact, they won’t get that many. Additional Democrats, such as Cory Booker (N.J.) and Mark Warner (Va.), have dutifully trudged into Obama’s camp.

As things are trending, Democrats may even be spared the embarrassment of having to cast formal votes in favor of the appalling deal they gently describe as “flawed.” There are 46 Senate Democrats (including a pair of nominal “independents”). Only three Democrats — Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Robert Menendez (N.J.), and Ben Cardin (Md.) — have committed to voting “no.” Thus, Obama may well amass the 41 votes needed to filibuster Senate consideration of the Iran deal. He would then avoid the humiliation of having to veto a “resolution of disapproval” that would illustrate how intensely unpopular his deal is with Congress and the public.

So game over, right?

Wrong.

While maddening, the Corker bill is not an abject congressional surrender to Obama and Tehran. It is a conditional surrender. It would grant Obama grudging congressional endorsement of the deal in the absence of a now unattainable veto-proof resolution of disapproval, but only if Obama fulfills certain basic terms. Obama has not complied with the most basic one: the mandate that he provide the complete Iran deal for Congress’s consideration. Therefore, notwithstanding Washington’s frenzied assumption that the 60-day period for a congressional vote is winding down, the clock has never actually started to run. Congress’s obligations under Corker have never been triggered; the Corker process is moot. Obama has withheld from Congress the Iran deal’s key inspection and verification provisions. As is his wont, the president is engaged in a fraud.

As I have previously outlined, Obama has withheld from Congress the Iran deal’s key inspection and verification provisions. As is his wont, the president is engaged in a fraud. He and his underlings repeatedly promised the public that there would be aggressive inspections and that Iran would have to come clean about its prior nuclear work so we could have an accurate baseline to determine whether the mullahs cheat in the future. But Iran was never going to agree to such terms.

Our legacy-hunting ideologue of a president naturally capitulated on this point, but he also understood that if his capitulation were obvious — if the inspection and verification terms were revealed to be a joke — even Democrats might abandon him. So Obama and his factotum, Secretary of State John Kerry, snuck these terms into a “side deal” that is purported to be strictly between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Notwithstanding that they are the crux of the deal from the American perspective, Obama takes the position that these terms may not be revealed to Congress, a stance the IAEA has dutifully backed.

Sorry, Mr. President, too-clever-by-half won’t get it done this time — or at least it shouldn’t, as long as Republicans follow the law they wrote and Obama signed.

The Corker legislation — formally known as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 — is crystal clear. In its very first section, the act requires the president to transmit to Congress “the agreement. . . . including all related materials and annexes.” It is too late to do that now: the act dictates that it was to have been done “not later than five days after reaching the agreement” — meaning July 19, since the agreement was finalized on July 14.

Underscoring the mandate that all relevant understandings in the Iran deal — including, of course, the essential understandings — must be provided to lawmakers, the act explicitly spells out a definition of the “Agreement” in subsection (h)(1). Under it, this is what the administration was required to give Congress over six weeks ago in order to trigger the afore-described Corker review process:

The term ‘agreement’ means an agreement related to the nuclear program of Iran . . . regardless of the form it takes, . . . including any joint comprehensive plan of action entered into or made between Iran and any other parties, and any additional materials related thereto, including annexes, appendices, codicils, side agreements, implementing materials, documents, and guidance, technical or other understandings, and any related agreements, whether entered into or implemented prior to the agreement or to be entered into or implemented in the future.

The act could not be more emphatic: To get the advantage of the favorable Corker formula that allows him to lift the anti-nuclear sanctions with only one-third congressional support, the president was required to supply Congress with every scintilla of information regarding verification. In particular, the act expressly demands disclosure of the terms pertinent to whether the IAEA is capable of executing aggressive inspections in Iran and has a plausible, enforceable plan to do so.

That is why, in conjunction with providing Congress the entire agreement, including any and all “side deals” between Iran and the IAEA, the act mandates that Secretary Kerry provide a “verification assessment report.” In it, the Obama administration must demonstrate not only how it (i) “will be able to verify that Iran is complying with its obligations and commitments” and (ii) will ensure the “adequacy of the safeguards and other control mechanisms” to ensure that Iran cannot “further any nuclear-related military or nuclear explosive purpose.” The administration must further explain: the capacity and capability of the International Atomic Energy Agency to effectively implement the verification regime required by or related to the agreement, including whether the International Atomic Energy Agency will have sufficient access to investigate suspicious sites or allegations of covert nuclear-related activities and whether it has the required funding, manpower, and authority to undertake the verification regime required by or related to the agreement.

Nor is that all. In making this report, the administration is required to rebut a presumption, based on solid experience, that Iran will cheat. Specifically, it is to be presumed that the jihadist regime will “use all measures not expressly prohibited by the agreement to conceal activities that violate its obligations,” and that it will “alter or deviate from standard practices in order to impede efforts that verify that Iran is complying with those obligations and commitments.”

Understand: It is indisputable that (a) the administration has not provided the Iran–IAEA side deal; (b) the IAEA is not up to the inspection task; (c) the Iranian regime is drastically restricting the IAEA’s access to suspect sites, even to the point of insisting that it will “self-inspect” by providing its own site samples rather than permitting IAEA physical seizures, a point on which Obama and the IAEA have remarkably acquiesced; and (d) Obama claims the Iranian regime can be trusted despite his deal’s laughably inadequate verification standards. To the contrary, the act dictates that (a) the administration must provide the side deal, (b) the IAEA must be capable of doing credible inspections; (c) the IAEA must be permitted by Iran to do credible inspections; and (d) the Iranian regime must not be trusted and will presumptively cheat.

Do you sense something of a disconnect between what Obama has proposed and what the act requires? It is not enough to say that Congress has no obligation to proceed with the Corker review process. It would, under the act, be impermissible for Congress to do so.

This is not a close call. To make it even simpler, even if the side deal were not critical to any assessment of the overall agreement (and it plainly is), the act explicitly required the administration to transmit it to Congress by July 19 (five days after the deal was reached). The side deal has never been provided. The administration’s failure to comply with the Corker legislation’s conditions means Congress’s reciprocal obligation to review the agreement and enable Obama to lift sanctions — in the teeth of massive majority opposition — has never been triggered.

It is not enough to say that Congress has no obligation to proceed with the Corker review process. It would, under the act, be impermissible for Congress to do so. This, by the way, is not just a straightforward legal fact; it is a matter of integrity.

Over deep opposition from the base voters who gave the GOP control of both houses of Congress, Republican leaders insisted on passing the anti-constitutional, Obama-backed Corker legislation on the (absurd) rationale that only by doing so could they make sure that the full agreement, every bit of it, would be revealed to Congress and the American people. This was a meager objective, since revelation of a disastrous deal is useless if, to get it, Congress had to forfeit its power to reject the deal. But regardless of where one stood in the intramural debate over whether achieving full exposure of Obama’s Iran deal was worth surrendering Congress’s constitutional advantages, the blunt fact is that full exposure has not been achieved.

The mandate that the Iran deal must be revealed in its entirety represents both a solemn political commitment by Republicans and an explicit legal requirement of the act. Obama has failed to comply with that mandate. Therefore, the Corker review process must not go forward.

There are many more things to be said about this. For example, it remains true, as I have previously asserted, that the Corker process should be deemed null and void because Obama’s indefensible deal is fundamentally different from the narrow nuclear-weapons pact that the Corker legislation assumed. Obama’s deal purports to relieve our enemies of restrictions against their promotion of terrorism and acquisition of ballistic missiles and conventional weapons. The Act prohibits this. Under its provisions, the Corker review process may be applied only to an agreement restricted to Iran’s nuclear program. See subsection (d)(7): “United States sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human rights abuses, and ballistic missiles will remain in place under an agreement.” (As we’ve seen, “agreement” is defined in subsection (h)(1) to relate only to “the nuclear program of Iran.”)

There is, moreover, a solid case, posited by Harold Furchtgott-Roth in Forbes, that Obama’s Iran deal effectively amends the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by dramatically altering Iran’s obligations under it. Because the Constitution makes treaties the law of the land, the legal equivalent of congressional statutes, a treaty can be superseded only by another treaty or an act of Congress. An executive agreement with minority congressional assent is insufficient.

The Corker review process, even if it were to go forward in contravention of the act’s terms, would apply only to the sanctions. It would not address the separate and profound question of whether Iran remains bound by its legal NPT obligations. That is a question the United States must resolve under our constitutional law, not based on bloviating by Obama, Kerry, or Iran’s foreign minister about purported dictates of international law.

Still, despite all the strong arguments to be made against the Iran deal, we must be realistic about what can be achieved here.

As I have been arguing for weeks, Congress must scrap the Corker process and treat Obama’s Iran deal as either a treaty or proposed legislation. Consequently, I could not agree more with my friend Jim Geraghty that the Senate should regard the deal as a treaty and vote it down decisively — as I’ve pointed out, senators don’t need the president’s cooperation to do this; their authority to review international agreements as treaties comes from the Constitution, not from Obama.

Yet I differ slightly with Jim on why it is important to do this. It is not for the purpose of influencing judicial consideration of the Iran deal. The courts are unlikely to referee a dispute regarding the relative power of the political branches to bind the nation to international agreements — even though the judges may have to get involved to the extent the sanctions affect the rights of private parties. RELATED: No Trust, No Verification, No Sanctions: Obama’s Humiliating Capitulation to the Mullahs

No, the reason to reject the Iran deal as a treaty is to lay the groundwork for the next president to abandon the deal. That involves putting other countries on notice, immediately, that the U.S. statutory sanctions are still in effect; that Obama is powerless to lift them permanently; that the next president is likely to enforce them; and that countries, businesses, and individuals that rely on Obama’s mere executive agreement as a rationale for resuming commerce with Tehran do so at their peril.

It is crucial to understand the state of play here. First, there is no stopping Obama from making an executive agreement with Iran, as long as the agreement does not violate the Constitution, federal statutes, and ratified treaties. He is the president, and he gets to conduct foreign policy as long as that is the case — but only while that is the case. Unlike treaties and statutes, Obama’s executive agreements do not bind our nation once he is gone. Second, because Congress never anticipated an Iran-friendly president like Obama, it provided presidents with authority to waive the existing sanctions — although not to lift them permanently. For now, this authority is Obama’s and he is entitled to use it, however reckless this may be.

Thus, Congress cannot “defeat” Obama’s Iran deal in the sense of eradicating it. As long as he is president, Obama can try to carry out his executive agreement even if Congress refuses to give it the force of binding law.

Congress can, nevertheless, delegitimize the deal by illustrating in a powerful way that it is merely an executive agreement between Iran and Obama. The sovereign — the American people — remains overwhelmingly opposed. The party to which the people have given a majority in Congress must make clear that the Iran deal is not the law of the land, and that the deal will be renounced the minute a new Republican president takes office. Congress can delegitimize the deal by illustrating in a powerful way that it is merely an executive agreement between Iran and Obama.

To do this, a preliminary step must be taken: Congress must undo the Corker legislation’s damage.

The Corker legislation was a lapse in judgment because it gave congressional assent to the permanent lifting of U.S. sanctions absent a veto-proof majority for maintaining them — which Republicans should have known was unattainable. The fallout of this lapse could be significant if the Corker review process is allowed to proceed.

From a legal standpoint, by going forward with the review process despite Obama’s failure to comply with the Corker legislation’s terms, Congress could be seen as forgiving Obama’s default. If lawmakers then go ahead with the vote on the Iran deal that the Republican opposition must inevitably lose because of Corker’s “minority wins” process, there would be a very reasonable legal argument that the sanctions have been repealed.

Republicans cannot let that happen. If the sanctions were deemed repealed, then the next president’s position would be dramatically weakened: Not only would the sanctions have to be reinstated by new law; it would be much more difficult politically for the next president to renounce Obama’s deal. Other countries would forcefully contend that the U.S. double-crossed them — that they lifted their sanctions, and commenced commerce with Iran, in reliance on Congress’s Corker-skewed “approval” of Obama’s deal.

As I have demonstrated above, it would be a violation of law to proceed with the Corker review process because (a) the administration has not complied with the Corker legislation’s mandate that the entire Iran deal be supplied to Congress by July 19 and (b) the Corker review process is explicitly limited to Iran’s nuclear program, while Obama’s deal, by contrast, goes far beyond nukes, eliminating anti-terrorism, anti–ballistic missile, and anti-weapons restrictions that the Corker legislation requires to be kept in place. So the preliminary step that must be taken is a resolution by Congress stating that (a) the Corker review process cannot proceed because the Obama administration has failed to comply with the Corker legislation’s express conditions; (b) therefore, under the legislation’s terms, Congress cannot proceed with an up-or-down vote on the Iran deal; and (c) the sanctions remain in effect, even if they are temporarily dormant
because Obama won’t enforce them.

Yes, Obama would veto the resolution (even though it is undeniable that he has not complied). But his veto would be irrelevant. Congress’s resolution explaining why no vote was taken on the Iran deal, which would pass overwhelmingly, would stand as the definitive statement to Iran and the rest of the world of why Congress has not attempted to pass a resolution of disapproval under the Corker process: It is not a matter of not having the votes; it is a matter of the president’s default. The Senate could then immediately follow that up by deeming Obama’s Iran deal as a treaty and voting it down by a wide margin.

Of course Obama would go characteristically demagogic in response. He would pretend that his default never happened and insist that Congress’s failure to enact a resolution of disapproval under the Corker framework means the sanctions are lifted forever. He would declaim that, under international law, the Security Council resolution he orchestrated before going to Congress binds our country to his Iran deal — to his empowerment of our enemies — even if our own Constitution has been flouted.

Let him rant and rave. He will only be president for another 16 months. This is now about what happens when he is gone. Obama’s arrogance and overreach have given Republicans a golden opportunity to correct their Corker misstep. They can still preserve the sanctions, preserve the NPT, and clarify that Obama’s green light to Iran on terrorism promotion and military build-up will not be worth the paper it is written on once he vacates the Oval Office.

By doing so, the GOP would not only reclaim the mantle of national security leadership; they would tee the 2016 election up as a referendum on the deeply unpopular Iran deal: Whom should the nation trust, Republicans who would sweep the Iran deal aside or Democrats who favor giving material support to an incorrigible enemy braying “Death to America”?

Even today’s breed of Republican ought to see the sense in that.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.timesofisrael.com/khamenei-israel-wont-survive-next-25-years/

[G M]

http://www.timesofisrael.com/khamenei-israel-wont-survive-next-25-years/

Who could have foreseen this?

[Crafty_Dog]

    Opinion
    Commentary

Cleaning Up After the Obama Team’s Iran Deal
Show Tehran the ways it may lose what it won at the gaming tables in Vienna.
By Michael B. Mukasey
Sept. 13, 2015 6:25 p.m. ET
WSJ

‘We couldn’t have negotiated a better deal.” That is one of the two pillars of the Obama administration’s argument in favor of its nuclear arrangement with Iran, the other being, “there’s no alternative but war.” Those two propositions appear to have won the day—at least with enough Democrats in Congress to prevent a vote disapproving of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The Iran deal remains deeply unpopular with the American public and with the Republican majority in Congress.

Over the past few months, the two propositions regarding the deal left opponents sputtering a catalog of its numerous defects. But it must be admitted that the first proposition—“we couldn’t have negotiated a better deal”—is plainly true.

Consider who the “we” are. President Obama, the deal’s principal proponent, has repeatedly refused to recognize the existence of Islamist radicalism and failed to enforce even his own red line against Bashar Assad’s use of poison gas in Syria.

The leader of the U.S. delegation, Secretary of State John Kerry, airily endorsed an inspections regimen agreed to between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency—an agreement whose wording he concedes the U.S. doesn’t have, although he thinks one member of the U.S. delegation may have seen it. Not providing the text of this side deal to Congress violates directly the statutory requirement that the administration supply “annexes, appendices, side agreements” and “any related agreements.”

Mr. Kerry also concedes that Iran will prevent access to what it calls defense sites. These include the Parchin facility, where Iran carries out weaponization experiments, and at which Iran will be permitted to take its own soil samples for presentation to the IAEA.


Finally, there is Wendy Sherman, the lead U.S. negotiator. What was her response to the suggestion that Congress should have had a chance to review the deal—as the president promised and U.S. law requires—before it was submitted to the U.N. Security Council? “It would have been a little difficult when all of the members of the P5+1 wanted to go to the United Nations to get an endorsement . . . for us to say, ‘Well excuse me, the world, you should wait for the United States Congress.’ ”

Given that team, “we” really could not have negotiated a better agreement and can’t now.

Which leaves the claim that the only alternative to the nuclear deal is war. That is a half-truth. It is true that unless the U.S. presents a credible threat that at some point force will be used if the deal is violated, no arrangement with Iran means anything. It is not true that the deal sets out the only alternatives to the immediate use of force against Iran’s nuclear program, or that the deal threatens the use of force at all.

The only downside for Iran in the deal is that after a lengthy process, the regime might be found to have cheated, and economic sanctions would “snap back” into place. Even if that actually happens, whatever contracts Iran negotiates before such a finding—whether for the sale of oil, for instance, or for the purchase of “dual use” materials suitable for nuclear applications—the contracts are given immunity from sanctions under the deal, and would help the regime continue its quest for a bomb.

What alternatives are available that might convince Iran that it may not be able to keep what it won at the gaming tables in Vienna, and that force is a possibility if it cheats? One is that a later U.S. president could repudiate the deal. Against this is set the bogus claim that if the U.S. were to do so, the world would lose confidence that this country will live up to its word.

The Iran deal is not a treaty and has no constitutional status. Congress should declare, and try to get a court to declare, that President Obama has no authority to lift sanctions in Iran because he failed to comply with the Iran Nuclear Review Act he signed earlier this year—specifically, the legal requirement that he show to Congress the entire agreement including “side agreements” like the one between Iran and the IAEA.

There are other steps to take. Gen. Michael Hayden, a former CIA director, has suggested an immediate congressional authorization for the use of force if Iran violates the deal; beefing up U.S. defenses in a meaningful way; and perhaps providing Israel with the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. This “bunker buster” could penetrate even the underground Iranian enrichment facility at Fordow, which is suitable principally for creating an atomic weapon.

Has the Tehran regime ever done anything to suggest that Iran will yield to that kind of pressure? The evidence is slim, but there is some. On Jan. 20, 1981, as the resolute Ronald Reagan was sworn in to succeed Jimmy Carter, the Iranians released the 52 U.S. hostages who had been seized in 1979 at the U.S. Embassy.

Another hint comes from 2003, after the U.S. started asking questions about an until-then secret nuclear facility at Natanz—and notably after the U.S. had invaded Iraq based in part on a belief that Saddam Hussein had an active WMD program. According to the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, Iran in 2003 suspended its weaponization and weapons-design program, although not the enrichment going on at its declared facilities.

To be credible, the force that is contemplated must—at a minimum—be able to cripple Iran’s nuclear program for the long term. Some have suggested that Iran has sufficient know-how to quickly rebuild any damaged facilities. Yet as former Defense Department analyst Matthew Kroenig and others have noted, Iran doesn’t have the kind of robust industrial base necessary to produce from scratch the infrastructure embedded at its nuclear facilities. Rather, it bought and smuggled hardware from North Korea, from the Pakistani A.Q. Khan network and elsewhere, and took about 30 years to reach its current level. Following a strike, with intense surveillance and enforcement when necessary, Iran could be kept decades from a bomb.

However, before Iran can respond to a credible threat of force there must be a U.S. administration with enough steel to do more than talk about whether a vague military option is on or off a metaphoric table. That is assuredly not the current “we.”

Mr. Mukasey is a former U.S. attorney general (2007-09) and a former U.S. District Judge (1988-2006).