Partisan rift widens over Iran

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO — The partisan divide in Washington D.C. over Iran’s nuclear aspirations has been growing wider, and more bitter, as President Barack Obama, a Democrat, argues with the Republican-controlled Congress over whether any agreement between Iran and the Permanent Five members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany—the so called P5+1—ought to be considered a treaty, and thus subject under the U.S. Constitution to ratification by the U.S. Senate.

A major salvo in this argument was fired on Monday, March 10, when 47 senators signed a letter written by freshman U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas).  Described as an “open letter to the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” it stated:

It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system.  Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution—the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices—which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress.

First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them.  In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote.  A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate).  Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.

Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics.  For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms.  As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then—perhaps decades.

What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei.  The next president 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.

We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress.

While not all Republican senators signed the letter, those who did included former presidential candidate John McCain of Arizona, and such current GOP presidential hopefuls as Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Marco Rubio of Florida. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also was among the signatories.

The response from Democrats was not long in coming, led by the Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who suggested the letter was motivated by Republicans’ animus against President Obama.  Reid said:

As we speak, the President and his Administration are engaged in negotiations to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. These negotiations are unprecedented and very critical to our country and the world. The stakes could not be higher. We as leaders should do everything we can to ensure these negotiations have a chance to succeed. When it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb, we should put partisanship aside.

Sadly, though, the judgment of my Republican colleagues seems to be clouded by their abhorrence of President Obama. Today Republican senators sent a letter to the Iranian regime’s leaders aimed at sabotaging these negotiations. Let’s be clear – Republicans are undermining our Commander-in-Chief while empowering the Ayatollahs. Just last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was here in the Capitol decrying the evil intent of Iranian leadership. And yet today, Senate Republicans are trying to negotiate with those very same leaders in Iran? This simply doesn’t make any sense.

The outcome of the negotiations between the U.S., France, the United Kingdom, Germany, China and Russia will affect the entire world. But it is unprecedented for one political party to directly intervene in an international negotiation, with the sole goal of embarrassing the President.

We should always have a robust debate about our foreign policy. This is a hard slap in the face of not only the United States and the world. This is not a time to undermine our Commander-in-Chief purely out of spite. Throughout the 8 years of George W. Bush’s presidency, I disagreed with his foreign policy. I spoke about it on the floor lots of time. We know the disaster of the war in Iraq. But even at the height of our disagreements with President George W. Bush, Senate Democrats never considered sending a letter to Saddam Hussein. It would have been an embarrassment to the Commander-in-Chief, George W. Bush.

So I say to my Republican colleagues, do you so dislike President Obama that you would take this extraordinary step? Barack Obama is the President. I have agreed with him on certain things and I have disagreed with him on certain things, but he is my President and he is your President. It is time for Republicans to accept that the citizens of our country have twice elected President Obama by large margins.

Obviously Republicans don’t know how to do anything other than attempt these seemingly juvenile political attacks against the President. Congressional Republicans don’t know how to get things done. They don’t know how to govern. If you don’t believe me, just read a newspaper. Look at the news. The pundits all agree that the Republicans are in a state of disarray here in the Congress of the United States. They don’t know what to do or how to do it.

Today’s unprecedented letter, originated by a United States Senator who took his oath of office merely 62 days ago, is the kind of pettiness that diminishes us as a country in the eyes of the world.

Republicans need to find a way to get over their animosity of President Obama. I can only hope they do it sooner rather than later.

Other Democrats weighed in as well, including some from the Jewish community.

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) said of the Republican letter: “This is a brazen attempt by Senate Republicans to sabotage negotiations aimed at preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. This bizarre, inappropriate letter is a desperate ploy to scuttle a comprehensive agreement and the chance for a peaceful resolution, which is in the best interests of the United States, Israel and the world.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) stated: “I am appalled at the latest step of 47 Republicans to blow up a major effort by our country and the world powers to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear program. This is a highly inappropriate and unprecedented incursion into the president’s prerogative to conduct foreign affairs and is not befitting this chamber. This letter only serves one purpose—to destroy an ongoing negotiation to reach a diplomatic agreement in its closing days.”

Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota), who unlike Boxer and Feinstein, boycotted the March 3 address to Congress by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “The letter signed by Republican Senators to Iran’s leaders seems to be a deliberate attempt to undermine our negotiators and sabotage sensitive diplomatic negotiations-negotiations aimed at preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.This is terribly misguided. By undercutting negotiations, these Senators are making military action in response to Iran’s nuclear program more likely.”

Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats, commented: “It appears that for most of my Republican colleagues in the Senate, a war in Afghanistan and a war in Iraq were not enough. They now apparently want a war in Iran as well. President Obama is working with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China to try to negotiate a peaceful means to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. These negotiations must be allowed to continue and, hopefully, will succeed. It is an outrage that my Republican colleagues are trying to sabotage that effort. ”  Sanders was among the three Jewish senators and three Jewish representatives who boycotted Netanyahu’s speech warning against a bad deal with Iran.

Another of those six boycotters was U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Kentucky), who stated:  “No matter who it may be or what political party they belong to, the President of the United States holds the prime responsibility for the conduct of U.S. foreign relations. This unprecedented and foolish ploy by Senate Republicans not only undermines President Obama’s authority, but also his leverage as these important talks continue. This improper injection of politics into a serious nuclear negotiation involving six world powers is both reckless and counterproductive, the sad result of having an entire Senate caucus running for President without respecting the very office they hope to one day hold. Politics should stop at our water’s edge, and the 47 Senators who signed this letter should be embarrassed of the new lows reached by their contemptible actions.”

On Tuesday, Senator Cotton announced that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who also is considered a possible presidential candidate, had added his signature to the Senate letter.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Eric Schultz was asked about the controversy on Tuesday during a flight aboard Air Force One to Atlanta.  Here is a transcript:

Q Can I ask about Iran real quick? Foreign Minister Zarif today said that the letter sent by Republicans was evidence that the U.S. was unreliable in the negotiations. This was sort of a break from what we had heard from him yesterday where he had sort of dismissed the Republicans’ letter. So I’m wondering if you guys interpreted that as him sort of playing to the hard line audience that he was speaking to, or if you guys are worried that this letter has not tangibly damaged or jeopardized the negotiations?

MR. SCHULTZ: I think we feel like this was a blatant, flagrant, and partisan attempt to interfere with the negotiations. As my colleagues have said, we have one President at a time in the United States, and that President is charged with conducting our foreign policy. As the Vice President said quite eloquently last night, the letter that was released yesterday is without precedent from the past two centuries based on the role that the United States Senate has played. So we feel like that letter was reckless, was irresponsible, was misguided, was a partisan attempt to undermine the President’s ability to negotiate with a foreign government.

Q Let me tackle that from a different direction. The President’s argument to Congress has been that if these talks are unsuccessful there shouldn’t be any excuse for Iran to say this is on the U.S. as opposed to on Iran. But between the Bibi speech and this letter and the sanctions legislation in Congress, if these talks now fail, doesn’t Iran already have a pretty persuasive argument that it’s because of Congress that this deal fell apart, not because Iran walked away from the table?

MR. ERIC SCHULTZ: Well, I do think you’ve raised an important point, Josh, that the negotiations that the United States is a part of are not bilateral with just Iran. We are involved in a complicated, sensitive negotiation with Russia, with the United Kingdom, with France and Germany, the European Union, and China.

So you are right that these are sensitive and these are complicated. And so if there’s going to be 47 members of the same political party who attempt to inject themselves in an attempt to undermine the negotiation, we do feel like it’s misguided.

Q So what is the White House doing, particularly with its partners in these talks, to sort of address any concerns the White House has about what’s happened? Like are partners asking questions about what does this mean? What is the White House actively doing to sort of talk to people about this?

MR. SCHULTZ: I don’t have any conversations or communications specifically with the P5-plus-1 group to read out to you. I can say that through the State Department, the negotiations to reach a deal continue, they continue in earnest, and they continue with an urgency as the deadline approaches.

Q It’s obvious there’s a real rift here now between Republicans in the Senate and the White House. What is the White House going to do for its part to try to address this rift or repair this rift, if anything?

MR. SCHULTZ: Well, I think a couple of things. One is it’s important to realize that, historically, the President has the role of executing on our foreign policy. So whether that’s looking at basing agreements for troops around the world, whether that is the agreement to rid Syria of chemical weapons — a framework that we establish with Russia — or whether that is a withdrawal of troops in Afghanistan, those are agreements that the President of the United States, the executive branch, worked on and coordinated with foreign governments around the world. So I think that’s an important piece of history.

And then the second thing I’d say is that there is a robust role for Congress. There’s an oversight role, there’s a consultative role. The reason we have such severe sanctions right now on Iran that brought them to the negotiating table is because of those sanctions. So we are on constant communication with the Hill, but what we don’t think is a good idea is a partisan attempt to undermine the negotiations.

And so matters stand–for the moment.

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Articles dealing with Jewish women in Congress are sponsored on San Diego Jewish World by Laura Galinson in memory of her father, Murray Galinson.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  Your comment may be sent to him at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com, or posted on this site, per below.

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