When the Senate leadership began discussing ways in which Congress should be able to play a role in overseeing the structure and implementation of the agreement being made with Iran, Pickering and his pals warned against it.
And then, even when compromises made by the bi-partisan leadership of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proved sufficient to allay the concerns of the diplomatic team’s own leadership, Pickering and his pals spoke out against it.
Slamming the bipartisan efforts of the U.S. Congress to ensure that any deal regarding Iran’s nuclear program was as strongly protective of U.S. interests as possible, Pickering’s pal, the NIAC policy director Jamal Abdi said: “This bill undercuts U.S. negotiating leverage by casting as an open question whether the U.S. can honor its commitments.”
He criticized the audacity of Congress to insert itself into a decision about whether and when to lift Congressional sanctions: “The uncertainty the bill creates regarding U.S. ability to provide sanctions relief, combined with the backlash that it could generate in Iran to limit their negotiators’ maneuverability, could very well mean greater U.S. concessions will be necessary to secure a deal.”
Perhaps for Jamal Abdi to express such concern is understandable, but former American diplomats?
When President Barack Obama announced that not only would he not veto the Corker bill, but instead declared his willingness to sign it, Pickering and his pals publicly continued speaking out firmly against it.
NIAC’s policy director said that the compromise “does not change the fundamental problems with this bill. It still threatens to derail the talks and kill a deal, and we remain opposed to it.”
He wrote that the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (Corker-Menendez): “is not oversight but instead an extraordinary effort to undermine the president’s ability to conduct diplomacy and change the rules of the game on our negotiators in the middle of high-stakes negotiations.”
IRAN’S DISMAL HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD
And even if there are those who are convinced Iran has no interest in developing nuclear weapons, what about Iran’s dismal human rights record?
A report recently released by the United Nations on Iran’s human rights record, expresses serious concerns.
The UN condemned the “continuing number of executions in Iran, including of political prisoners and juveniles”; it expressed grave concerns about Iran’s use of torture on prisoners, while denying them access to lawyers.
The UN report expressed horror about rampant child marriage (the legal age of marriage for girls in Iran is 13, but some are permitted to marry at nine years of age), and the widespread existence of formalized gender discrimination laws.
The rampant censorship, restrictions on freedom of opinion and freedom of the press were all mentioned in the UN report, as was the widespread existence of the abuse of religious and ethnic minorities in Iran.
Last year, to its shame, Brandeis revoked its invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali because its professors and students were horrified by her views on Islam.
Even if you forget all about Israel (as Brandeis apparently has), has the university undergone such value contortions that Brandeis University chooses to spurn a woman for speaking about her own experiences with Islam, while an advocate for a regime that murders gays, marginalizes and abuses women and children and ignores freedom and civil rights is given its highest honors?
If you listen real hard at this year’s Brandeis Graduation on May 17, you may hear the anguished cries of Justice Brandeis; let’s hope the Board of Trustees also hear them.