by Harry C. Blaney III
As we move into the final days of consideration by Congress of the Iran Nuclear Deal, there is growing acknowledgment by the GOP Hill leaders that they will not prevail via the measures of the disapproval bill to stop the Iran deal from going ahead. Such measures will be met with either getting the last 7 Democrats in the Senate to sign on to the vote to consider the legislation by using their filibuster option on this disapproval motion, or if that does not work, to affirm the President’s veto.
Yet, sadly, the effort to scuttle the deal may not end, as there are press reports that the GOP leaders and tea party extremists will insist on adding provisions to on-going and most passed legislation in efforts to indirectly destroy the deal. As they have tried to kill Obamacare by many dozens of votes, part of a larger strategy of denying President Obama any victories, they are completely disregarding America’s true interests and security. In response, American citizens will need to be alert to this strategy. Already Democratic Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland who is the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has deserted his President on the Iran nuclear agreement to prevent Iran getting nuclear weapons and followed the dictates of the right wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who seems, via dogged confrontations including into U.S. politics and his turning away from peace negotiations and building settlements outside of Israel’s borders on Palistiinian land, in this writer’s view, endangering long-term Israel’s security not protecting it.
See below the citation to the new key argument that Secretary Kerry and Vice president Biden have just recently made in major talks on this issue. Worth a read!
The most important element at the end of the day, however, is that the restrains on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, detailed in the deal, will go forward and be enforced with the conditions the President and Secretary along with the P5 plus one and the EU have put into place to block any likely pathway to nuclear weapons for Iran.
The next stage is to develop policies and approaches to bring a better measure of security and peace in the region.
To this end on Friday September 3rd President Obama met with Saudi Arabia King Salman and other Saudi leaders to address Iran issues and discuss Middle East security and ways forward on how to send the many conflicts in the region. But there are many questions and complex and difficulty issues to address and much hard negotiations as we now rightly look beyond Iran alone and look at the larger Middle East landscape.
We welcome your comments.
Rethinking National Security 