It’s not clear where these leaks about the deal are coming from, but in an interview on CNN, Sunday, Speaker Boehner told host Dana Bash that he thinks they “probably came out of the White House.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned on Sunday the framework Iranian nuclear agreement being sought by international negotiators, saying it was even worse than his country had feared.
Israel has mounted what it terms an “uphill battle” against an agreement that might ease sanctions on the Iranians while leaving them with a nuclear infrastructure with bomb-making potential. Tehran says its nuclear programme is peaceful.
“This deal, as it appears to be emerging, bears out all of our fears, and even more than that,” Netanyahu told his cabinet in Jerusalem as the United States, five other world powers and Iran worked toward a March 31 deadline in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Noting advances made by Iranian-allied forces in Yemen and other Arab countries, Netanyahu accused the Islamic republic of trying to “conquer the entire Middle East” while moving toward nuclearisation.
“The Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis is very dangerous to humanity, and must be stopped,” he said.
House Speaker Boehner will travel to Israel this week during the Congressional recess. On CNN’s “State of the Union”, Sunday, he told Dana Bash that his plans were made before the ongoing acrimony between Netanyahu and Obama became an open spat.
“There are serious issues and activities going on in the Middle East and I think it’s critically important for members of Congress to hear from foreign leaders, other governments, other parts of their government, to get a real handle on the challenges that we face there,” Boehner said.
Boehner argued that Netanyahu hasn’t crossed any lines and pointed out that Israel doesn’t really have a peace partner at the moment.
“Well, he doesn’t have a partner,” Boehner said. “How do you have a two-state solution when you don’t have a partner in that solution, when you don’t have a partner for peace, when you’ve got a — when the other state is vowing to wipe you off the face of the earth?”
Boehner also defended Netanyahu from criticism from Obama and the White House that has mounted over the last month.
“I think the animosity exhibited by our administration toward the prime minister of Israel is reprehensible,” Boehner said. “And I think that the pressure that they’ve put on him over the last four or five years have frankly pushed him to the point where he had to speak up.”
“I don’t blame him at all for speaking up,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was in Israel Sunday, already meeting with Netanyahu.
Standing beside Netanyahu, McConnell assured him that Congress would have to approve any deal.
The absence of a deal would lead to the Senate “ratcheting up sanctions,” he said.
The White House has repeatedly stated that the agreement being negotiated between Iran and the P5+1 will not require Senate advice and consent. It has also threatened to veto legislation providing for congressional approval, if it is sent to the president’s desk.
The deadline for a framework nuclear agreement is Tuesday night. Kerry, who has been negotiating with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in the Swiss city of Lausanne since Thursday, was joined at the weekend by his counterparts from the P5+1, the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.
Netanyahu, who in a controversial address before Congress early this month warned that a proposed nuclear deal would be dangerous for Israel, the region and the world, doubled down on the criticism on Sunday.
“This agreement, as it appears, confirms all of our concerns and even more so,” he said at a cabinet meeting.
Iran long held designs on a Shia Crescent and control over Arab lands, which helps explain why Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others counted themselves as our allies. They are furious as they watch Iran get a nuclear pass from Obama and a green light to expand its power.
The nuclear program will have the United Nations stamp of approval, as will Iranian control of four Arab capitals — Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad and now Sanaa, Yemen. Indeed, Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry suggest Iran even could be an ally in the fight against Islamic State and al Qaeda. Already there has been coordination there, leading critics to say America is acting as the Iranian air force.
Israel, of course, sees the pattern as insane and a threat because Iran has threatened to wipe it off the face of the earth. In retaliation for complaining about the nuke deal, Obama denounces our ally and threatens to “re-evaluate” our support for the Jewish state.
But Israel is not alone, with our Sunni Arab allies also viewing Iran as their mortal enemy. Sen. John McCain quoted one of those Arab leaders as concluding, “We believe it is more dangerous to be a friend of America’s than an enemy.”
These are unprecedented developments, veering so far from the norm and happening so fast that consequences are piling up faster than they can be comprehended. Alliances built over decades are shattered in a relative flash, inviting aggression and endless conflict. The toxic brew of Islamic fanaticism and nuclear proliferation could ignite a world conflagration.
These are grim thoughts, expressed because it is impossible to imagine any other outcome of Iran’s rise.
Democrats are in high dudgeon over an open letter 47 United States Senators sent to the Iranian regime on Monday which warned that any deal brokered by the president could be revoked by Congress.
Soon after the letter was made public, an incensed Obama suggested that the senators were in league with mad mullahs of Tehran:
“I think it’s somewhat ironic to see some members of Congress wanting to make common cause with the hard-liners in Iran. It’s an unusual coalition.”
Here is what the letter stated, and you tell me if they are making common cause with our enemies:
“The next president,” the letter stated, “could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen, and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”
It would seem the Republicans in Congress are in agreement with the Prime Minister of Israel and the leaders of the Arab worldwho fear that the Obama administration is brokering a terrible deal with the mad mullahs – a deal of appeasement and capitulation. A deal that allows Iran to go nuclear.
This is not what any sane person would call “making common cause with hard-liners.”
But taking their cue from the man at the top, Vice President Joe Biden, WH Spox Josh Earnest, The New York Daily News, former WH speechwriter Jon Lovett, and others have hysterically accused the 47 republican senators of high treason. The hashtag #47Traitors is currently trending on Twitter.
There is someone who appears to be making “common cause with the hardliners in Iran.” And it’s not the Republicans.
It is the president himself who has sent secret love letters to the ayatollahs.
Obama has made it manifestly clear that he doesn’t like our longtime ally, Israel – as Ralph Peters so succinctly put it– “if Israel disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow, Obama would not shed a single tear.” It is feared that Obama administration has already accepted that Iran will get the bomb and create a new hegemony in the Middle East – and is just hoping that the first blast happens on someone else’s watch.
But in Obama’s America where black is white, up is down, right is wrong – it is those who stand up for America and the free world – who are the “traitors.”
Hyperventilating Democrats are trying to claim that the GOP letter may have violated the Logan Act – which “has never actually been used for prosecution, nor has its Constitutionality been seriously reviewed in two hundred years” according to Breitbart’s Ben Shapiro. If Republicans violated the Logan Act, so did the Democrats – who have a disgusting history of colluding against Republican presidents with our nation’s enemies:
Senators John Sparkman (D-AL) and George McGovern (D-SD). The two Senators visited Cuba and met with government actors there in 1975. They said that they did not act on behalf of the United States, so the State Department ignored their activity.
Senator Teddy Kennedy (D-MA). In 1983, Teddy Kennedy sent emissaries to the Soviets to undermine Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy. According to a memo finally released in 1991 from head of the KGB Victor Chebrikov to then-Soviet leader Yuri Andropov:
On 9-10 May of this year, Sen. Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow. The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.
What was the message? That Teddy would help stifle Reagan’s anti-Soviet foreign policy if the Soviets would help Teddy run against Reagan in 1984. Kennedy offered to visit Moscow to “arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA.” Then he said that he would set up interviews with Andropov in the United States. “Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews…Like other rational people, [Kennedy] is very troubled by the current state of Soviet-American relations,” the letter explained. The memo concluded:
Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988. Kennedy does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic Party may officially turn to him to lead the fight against the Republicans and elect their candidate president.
House Speaker Jim Wright (D-TX). In 1984, 10 Democrats sent a letter to Daniel Ortega Saavedra, the head of the military dictatorship in Nicaragua, praising Saavedra for “taking steps to open up the political process in your country.” House Speaker Jim Wright signed the letter.
In 1987, Wright worked out a deal to bring Ortega to the United States to visit with lawmakers. As The New York Times reported:
There were times when the White House seemed left out of the peace process, uninformed, irritated. ”We don’t have any idea what’s going on,” an Administration official said Thursday. And there was a bizarre atmosphere to the motion and commotion: the leftist Mr. Ortega, one of President Reagan’s arch enemies, heads a Government that the Administration has been trying to overthrow by helping to finance a war that has killed thousands of Nicaraguans on both sides. Yet he was freely moving around Washington, visiting Mr. Wright in his Capitol Hill office, arguing his case in Congress and at heavily covered televised news conferences. He criticized President Reagan; he recalled that the United States, whose troops intervened in Nicaragua several times between 1909 and 1933, had supported the Somoza family dictatorship which lasted for 43 years until the Sandinistas overthrew it in 1979.
Ortega then sat next to Wright as he presented a “detailed cease-fire proposal.” The New York Times said, “Mr. Ortega seemed delighted to turn to Mr. Wright.”
Senator John Kerry (D-MA). Kerry jumped into the pro-Sandanista pool himself in 1985, when he traveled to Nicaragua to negotiate with the regime. He wasn’t alone; Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) joined him. The Christian Science Monitor reported that the two senators “brought back word that Mr. Ortega would be willing to accept a cease-fire if Congress rejected aid to the rebels…That week the House initially voted down aid to the contras, and Mr. Ortega made an immediate trip to Moscow.” Kerry then shilled on behalf of the Ortega government:
We are still trying to overthrow the politics of another country in contravention of international law, against the Organization of American States charter. We negotiated with North Vietnam. Why can we not negotiate with a country smaller than North Carolina and with half the population of Massachusetts? It’s beyond me. And the reason is that they just want to get rid of them [the Sandinistas], they want to throw them out, they don’t want to talk to them.
Representatives Jim McDermott (D-WA), David Bonior (D-MI), and Mike Thompson (D-CA). In 2002, the three Congressmen visited Baghdad to play defense for Saddam Hussein’s regime. There, McDermott laid the groundwork for the Democratic Party’s later rip on President George W. Bush, stating, “the president of the United States will lie to the American people in order to get us into this war.” McDermott, along with his colleagues, suggested that the American administration give the Iraqi regime “due process” and “take the Iraqis on their face value.” Bonior said openly he was acting on behalf of the government:
The purpose of our trip was to make it very clear, as I said in my opening statement, to the officials in Iraq how serious we–the United States is about going to war and that they will have war unless these inspections are allowed to go unconditionally and unfettered and open. And that was our point. And that was in the best interest of not only Iraq, but the American citizens and our troops. And that’s what we were emphasizing. That was our primary concern–that and looking at the humanitarian situation.
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). In 2002, Rockefeller told Fox News’ Chris Wallace, “I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq, that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11.” That would have given Saddam Hussein fourteen months in which to prepare for war.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). In April 2007, as the Bush administration pursued pressure against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went to visit him. There, according to The New York Times, the two “discussed a variety of Middle Eastern issues, including the situations in Iraq and Lebanon and the prospect of peace talks between Syria and Israel.” Pelosi was accompanied by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Tom Lantos (D-CA), Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY), Nick J. Rahall II (D-WV), and Keith Ellison (D-MN). Zaid Haider, Damascus bureau chief for Al Safir, reportedly said, ‘There is a feeling now that change is going on in American policy – even if it’s being led by the opposition.”
In November 1990, two months after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Carter wrote a letter to the heads of state of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. He urged the countries to drop their support for Bush’s proposed military solution.
…
Right up to Bush’s Jan. 15 deadline for war, Carter continued his shadow foreign policy campaign. On Jan. 10, he wrote the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria and asked them to oppose the impending military action.
…
During the Clinton administration, Carter had similar difficulties coming to grips with the fact that he was not president. In 1994, President Clinton dispatched Carter to defuse an impending war with North Korea over that country’s nuclear program. Again, Carter confused the foreign policy of the U.S. government with his own personal inclinations and conducted some free-lance diplomacy, this time on CNN. After meeting with Kim Il Sung, Carter went live on CNN International without telling the administration. His motive: Undermine the Clinton administration’s efforts to impose U.N. sanctions on North Korea. Carter believed sanctions threatened the agreement he had worked out. By speaking directly to the world about the prospects for peace, he knowingly encouraged countries like Russia and China, which were resisting a sanctions regime. According to Brinkley, a Clinton Cabinet member referred to Carter as a “treasonous prick” for his behavior.
These Democrats did not contact foreign leaders in an effort to undermine an enemy’s nefarious goals (like the Republicans did.) They met with foreign enemies to undermine the Republican president and by extension – our national interests.
If Obama’s nuke deal was in the nation’s best interest, he would abide by the Constitution of the United States which clearly states in Section 2: “He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur…” But Obama refuses to do that. Instead, he goes over their heads, while disturbing details about the deal are leaked out.
During his first presidential campaign in 2008, Mr. Obama used a secret back channel to Tehran to assure the mullahs that he was a friend of the Islamic Republic, and that they would be very happy with his policies. The secret channel was AmbassadorWilliam G. Miller, who served in Iran during the shah’s rule, as chief of staff for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and as ambassador to Ukraine. Ambassador Miller has confirmed to me his conversations with Iranian leaders during the 2008 campaign.
Lt. Col Ralph Peters (Ret) weighed in on Hannity, last night, bringing up “the Naval hero of Chappaquiddick’s outreach to the Soviet Union to undermine President Reagan’s anti-Communist policies.
Megyn Kelly had Lt. Col. Oliver North on the Kelly File Thursday night to talk about the recent military strikes by Iran-sponsored Hezbollah on the Lebanon/Israel border.
North, who is currently in Israel, and witnessed the attacks said, “Israel has been under siege from Hamas in the South and Hezbollah in the North.”
And while all that has been going on, North continued, there was “this tiff going on in Washington” regarding Netanyahu speaking before Congress.
“Obama is acting like a petulant child,” he declared. “He’s detached from the reality of what’s going on on the border – with Hamas, with Hezbollah.”
North noted that Netanyahu “is focused on the threat that is posed by the possibility and now even the likelihood of an Iranian nuclear weapon.”
Asked if the Israeli people care about what Obama thinks, North answered, “I think the Israeli people are quite fed up with Mr. Obama. I hear that routinely.”
He said Israelis look at the White House as interfering in the election.
Nice Deb 