Author Topic: Obama Recruits Foreign Leader to Lobby Senators Against Iran Sanctions  (Read 432 times)

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Obama Recruits Foreign Leader to Lobby Senators Against Iran Sanctions

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On January 18, 2015 @ 9:26 am In The Point | 20 Comments




David Cameron is widely despised back in the UK. Apparently Obama thinks he can be more convincing in the US than the UK.


British Prime Minister David Cameron is appealing directly to some senators in the U.S. Congress to reconsider a bill that would open up the possibility of new sanctions against Iran.

“I have contacted a couple of senators this morning, and I may speak to one or two more this afternoon,” Cameron said during a joint press conference with President Obama at the White House Friday. The prime minister arrived in Washington Thursday to meet with the president and his administration to discuss a range of issues.

Cameron said his calls were “not in any way… to tell the American Senate what it should or should not do.” Instead, he wanted to tell the U.S. Senate that “it’s the opinion of the United Kingdom that further sanctions, or further threat of sanctions, at this point won’t actually help.” The legislation, he said, “could actually fracture” the international coalition negotiating with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

He isn’t trying to tell Senators what to do… he’s just trying to tell them what to do. You can see why Cameron is widely considered a liar… and a bad liar. That last one is not a good thing for a career in politics.

The Washington Post casually takes apart the key argument used by Cameron and Obama against sanctions. You can see it in Cameron waffling over “further threat of sanctions”.


The logic of that argument has always been a little hard to follow, since the measure the Senate is likely to take up, sponsored by Democrat Robert Menendez (N.J.) and Republican Mark Kirk (Ill.), would mandate new sanctions only if Iran failed to accept an agreement by the June 30 deadline established in the ongoing talks. Common sense suggests the certain prospect of more punishment for an already-damaged economy would make the regime of Ali Khamenei more rather than less likely to offer the concessions necessary for a deal.

We gave Mr. Obama’s argument the benefit of the doubt when Congress first considered the legislation more than a year ago. But the president’s logic has been undercut by the manifest willingness of the Iranians to adopt their own pressure tactics — including steps that are considerably more noxious than the threat of future sanctions. On the day before talks resumed between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif last Wednesday, Tehran announced that construction has begun on two new nuclear reactors. The next day its news agency reported that the case of Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, who has been imprisoned since July 22, had been referred to the Revolutionary Court for “processing.”

The State Department was quick to explain that Iran is not barred by United Nations resolutions or an interim nuclear agreement from building new reactors. Yet by announcing the construction, the regime is making clear its intention to continue expanding, rather than dismantling, its nuclear infrastructure. It’s also demonstrating that it’s not constrained from taking provocative steps during the course of the negotiations — even as the Obama administration argues that countervailing pressure would somehow be a deal breaker.

Obama’s argument is ridiculous even by the standards of soft power. Bringing in Cameron to make the pitch to Senators only embarrasses him further.

The entire premise of it concedes that Iran can do anything it likes without consequences, but that if the US even threatens sanctions, then the negotiations will suddenly collapse.

Anyone can figure out for themselves what a dream produced under those conditions would mean and how unlikely it would be to stop an Iranian bomb.


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