Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Nuclear Treaty Back Story

President Obama was royally P.O.'ed at Prime Minister Netanyahu for talking to Congress about the nuclear deal being negotiated with Iran. Now The Wall Street Journal has the back story, the reason for the angst, unfortunately their article is behind a paywall.

Fortunately Legal Insurrection has the text of much of the WSJ story on its freely available site. I invite you to go there and read it.

It turns out Israel was spying on the talks, to which they are not a party. Israel determined Obama was willing to give away what was, in their opinion, too much to the Iranians, to make a deal with insufficient safeguards lasting too little time.

What really ticked off Obama was the Israelis shared this covert information with the U.S. Congress! Shock ... horror ... security breach ... Congress is where the real enemies live. Not in Tehran, Moscow or Beijing, nor even Pyongyang or Caracas; the real enemies are in Congress just a mile away from the White House.

The response of Congress has been a letter signed by a veto-proof group of 367 bipartisan House members. CNN reports they wrote:
Should an agreement with Iran be reached, permanent sanctions relief from congressionally-mandated sanctions would require new legislation. In reviewing such an agreement, Congress must be convinced that its terms foreclose any pathway to a bomb, and only then will Congress be able to consider permanent sanctions relief.
Translation: No effective treaty without our approval, which probably means no treaty Iran could agree to, result: no treaty.