Ryan Cooper writes: The prospects for a long-term bargain with Iran are looking better than they have in quite some time. The rise of the Islamic State provided an unexpected boost, since it put Iran on the “same side” as the U.S. The fall in global oil prices hasn’t hurt either, putting pressure on Iran to reach a rapport with the West. So last week, the possible outlines of a deal emerged, and they appear to be acceptable to both moderates in Tehran and the White House.
Predictably, a counter-offensive has been launched by various hawkish factions. Hard-liners in both Iran and the U.S. are trying to scuttle the deal, and so is Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, who is scheduled to give an address to a joint session of Congress with that objective.
It is critical that the hawks fail. This is a good opportunity to ease tensions with Iran, an event that is long overdue.
The hard-liner position in both countries is basically identical. “Our nation can never tolerate this!” shouted one Iranian MP recently, according to The Wall Street Journal. “It’s a big mistake to have any relationship with the U.S.,” said another.
If anything, American hawks are even more belligerent than their Iranian counterparts. [Continue reading…]
.Israel and its neocons pushed us into war with Iraq in hope that momentum would get us into war with Iran. Instead, we got out of Iraq and are negotiating a no-nukes pact with Iran. The very Republicans who so emphasized patriotic assimilation through citizenship and reject ethnic assimilation through naturalization are now calling for Israeli PM Netanyahu to come and lobby Congress against the President, the maker of US foreign policy. Republican leaders went to an all expenses paid trip to Israel, paid for by a group that insists that ONLY Christians can be US Citizens so Jews cannot. This fits Netayahu’s Likud Party philosophy that any Jew who doesn’t move to Israel is a “cosmopolitan parasite”– the same term used by Stalinist anti-Semitism after WWII. Jews are as American as anyone else– patriotic to US FIRST AND FOREMOST– but Boehner, of German ancestry, seems to want to drive a wedge between Jews and other Americans by participating in an all-expenses-paid trip by a nutty right wing Christians-only-as-American group that would deny Jews American status. This fits well the Likud version of Zionism that all Jews MUST leave the Diasporah and join its alliah to Israel to become Israelis. For both Netanyahu and the Republicans, Jews kicked out of America and forced to move to Israel is the ideal “final solution.” This is criminal; and Dems fearing losing votes for not showing up at the Netanyahu’s scandalous violation of diplomatic protocol, thus fueling American antisemitism and undermining the critical US-Iran negotiations on which peace depends, shows that Republican care more for political power than for US national interests. At the same time, the participation on a trip to Israel paid for by an antisemitic organization that would deny Jews US citizenship because they are not Christians, shows that the Republican Party shares Likud’s desire that American Jews lose their US citizenship so that they be forced to move to Israel. We are back to 1939 thinking thanks to Boehner and his Republicans. Dems cannot afford to duck this issue and must stand for American Jews by publicly denouncing Netanyahu and Boehner and that crazy “Christian” (sic) group