The shrillness with which President Obama and his amen corner in the media have been defending the proposed nuclear deal with Iran is doubtless a measure of the growing dismay over what many see as a deeply flawed agreement and one fraught with great danger.
The president took some heat after he conceded in an NPR interview that the Iran deal will expire in 10 years, and that after 12 years from implementation of the agreement – even if Iran were to comply with the inspection and restriction requirements – the Iranians will probably have zero breakout time to build a nuclear weapon. But Mr. Obama appeared unruffled by the criticism. Plainly, there is a nuclear Iran in the world’s future, and for this president, a legitimate one to boot.
Not only have particular provisions of the proposed agreement come under serious attack, there are signs that the very notion of a deal itself – any deal – is problematical. The revelation that Russia has agreed to sell Iran defensive missiles and is poised to buy some $20 billion worth of oil from Tehran seems to have undercut the whole sanctions regime. The very prospect of a deal has already accorded some legitimacy to Iran despite its continuing support for most terrorist efforts in the Middle East and Gulf region.
So it’s not surprising that the president and his supporters have been desperately challenging the messengers rather than their message.
Mr. Obama himself inelegantly cautioned members of the Senate to be careful not to “screw up” the negotiations by seeking to have input into the future of the sanctions regime that has been imposed on Iran.
Excuse us, but what is it about the advise and consent role of the legislative branch that this president doesn’t understand?
The New York Times, in a sharply worded editorial, went Mr. Obama more than one better. For the Times, any attack on the Iran negotiations must be based on a racially based effort at “denigrating” the president personally, designed “to undermine not just Mr. Obama’s policies, but his very legitimacy as president” and, further, that “it is impossible to dismiss the notion that race plays a role in it.”
According to the Times, “[p]erhaps the most outrageous example of the attack on the president’s legitimacy was an open letter signed by 47 Republican senators to the leadership of Iran saying Mr. Obama had no authority to conclude negotiations over Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”
The editorial asked readers to “Try to imagine the outrage from Republicans if a similar group of Democrats had written to the Kremlin in 1986 telling Mikhail Gorbachev that President Ronald Reagan did not have the authority to negotiate a deal at the Reykjavik summit that winter.”
To the Times, “There is no functional difference between that example and the Iran talks, except that the congressional Republican caucus does not like Mr. Obama and wants to deny him any policy victory.”
But no verbal sleight of hand can blur the distinction. For one thing, the letter was not covertly sent to Iran’s leaders but was an open letter to the world published in the U.S. that made the point that the president could not act as if he were the Lone Ranger. More important, President Reagan never tried to keep the Senate from performing its constitutional role. Indeed, the negotiations he conducted in Reykjavik were premised on eventual Senate confirmation.
As the full agreement comes more into focus, we can expect more of this unseemly obfuscation, despite whatever compromise lawmakers may strike with the administration.