Republican Senators' Iran Letter Might Stop Bad Deal

 

IBDEditorials.com

Secretary of State John Kerry discusses seating arrangements for a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during a round of nuclear negotiations in Montreux, Switzerland, on March 2, 2015. AP

Nuclear Jihad: A letter from 47 Republican senators warning Iran that a nuclear deal might not pass constitutional muster has a very worthy hidden purpose: to derail these dangerous talks.

Maybe the GOP isn't that foolish after all. In what may be a trump card that it's been keeping up its sleeve for months, the Senate GOP leadership — and all but a handful of the party's senators — has penned "An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

The letter's tone is that of a helpful guide to the U.S. Constitution for a foreigner.

"It has come to our attention ... that you may not fully understand our constitutional system," it begins.

"In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote," the letter points out.

Of course, Secretary of State John Kerry has no intention of returning home with a treaty; he and President Obama know that a treaty with the world's foremost terrorist state would fail in a Republican-majority Senate.

The letter goes on:

"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."

In other words, it won't be binding on the U.S., especially if Obama is succeed by a non-dove.

"The president may serve only two 4-year terms," the Iranians were told, "whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms. ... Most of us will remain in office well beyond" Obama's departure in less than two years — "perhaps decades."

Translation: Those people you've been spending more than a year eyeing on the other side of the negotiating table in Geneva, unlike you, aren't the ones with the power to commit their country to what you may have in mind.

After declaring, "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 GOP senators breezily close with: "We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress."

No wonder Democrats were fit to be tied. The party's second-ranking senator, Dick Durbin of Illinois, called it a "political stunt" that could cause "another war in the Middle East."

What it really is is a geopolitical "Dear John" letter. It's a message to Islamofascist Iran that its long, deceptive courtship of America has been a waste of time, because the Senate will not sit by helplessly and watch a national suicide attempt.

Durbin, Kerry, Obama and the rest of the Democrats who value pieces of paper over real security don't seem to realize there is a war going on in the Mideast, and beyond, already. And a deal that makes a nuclear-armed Iran an inevitability loses a massive battle in that global war on terror.