Senate Joins House In the August Recess | Bloomberg Editors: "Obama Puts Fear Before Facts on Iran"

Today in Washington, D.C. - Aug 6, 2015
The House members are already on August recess / work in their districts until Sept 8th. Contact YOUR Congressman and tell him/her what you are concerned about. However, the House convened in pro-forma session at Noon and will do so again on Aug 7th. Pro-forma sessions are held to primarily to keep the President from doing recess appointments.

The Senate reconvened at 11:30 AM today for a pro forma session today and then adjourned for August recess. During the recess, senators will travel throughout their states to meet with constituents.

The Senate will reconvene for legislative business on Tuesday, September 8th.

Yesterday, the Senate agreed by unanimous consent to begin debate on H. J. Res. 61, the Resolution of Disapproval of the Iran Agreement.

Also yesterday, senators agreed by unanimous consent to take up the cybersecurity bill, S. 754, at a later date and to consider 21 amendments to the bill.

By voice vote yesterday, the Senate confirmed ambassadors to Pakistan, the Maldives, Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Guyana, Cyprus, Romania, Estonia, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Poland.

Also, the Senate confirmed by voice vote were Gregory Nadeau to be Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration and Denise Roth to be Administrator of General Services, among several other executive branch and board nominations.

Commentary and News:
In response to President Obama saying yesterday that “It's those [Iranian] hardliners chanting ‘Death to America’ who have been most opposed to the deal. They're making common cause with the Republican Caucus,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “I called on President Obama this morning to join members of both parties in approaching this gravely important matter with the reverence and respect it clearly deserves. Members of both parties have serious and heartfelt concerns about the Iran deal. These Democrats and Republicans deserved serious answers today, not some outrageous attempt to equate their search for answers with supporting chants of ‘Death to America.’ I imagine the Democrats who’ve already come out against this agreement will be especially insulted by it. This goes way over the line of civil discourse.  Let me repeat my call for the President to shelve these talking points no one believes and resist these insults no one deserves so we can all aim higher —and rise to the moment together.

“The President needs to retract his bizarre and preposterous comments, and both supporters and defenders of the President’s deal with Iran should reject this offensive rhetoric.”

The Bloomberg View editors were similarly unimpressed with the president’s partisan rhetoric in his speech about the administration’s Iran deal. They wrote, “[The president] had a case to make but chose not to make it. He decided instead to cast legitimate criticism of his pact as ignorant warmongering.”

They then criticized many of the president’s other claims:

“‘We have achieved a detailed arrangement that permanently prohibits Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.’ Actually, the deal's restrictions end abruptly after 15 years, with some of the constraints on uranium enrichment fading away after just 10. Late in the speech, Obama made the case that much can change in a decade and that the West could be in a stronger position then to continue to block Iran's nuclear desires. But the temporary nature of the deal remained disguised. . . .

“‘If there is a reason for inspecting a suspicious undeclared site anywhere in Iran, inspectors will get that access even if Iran objects. This access can be with as little as 24 hours' notice.’ The key words here are ‘as little as.’ Iran can draw that process out for as long as 24 days if it so chooses. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif says some military sites will remain off-limits to IAEA personnel. . . .

“‘I've had to make a lot of tough calls as president, but whether or not this deal is good for American security is not one of those calls, it's not even close.’ Maybe this deal is the best chance to delay the mullahs' race to the bomb and keep the Middle East out of a nuclear arms race. But the case is anything but open-and-shut. It's hard to see what the president gains from denying this.

“Well, perhaps one thing: Obama may hope that denigrating those who disagree with him will rally Democrats in Congress to support a veto of any measure of disapproval.”

The Wall Street Journal editors also found the president’s rhetoric unpersuasive and unworthy of the seriousness of the debate: “President Obama’s Iran deal has been losing support in the polls and on Capitol Hill, and so on Wednesday he tried to reason with his critics. ‘It’s those hardliners [in Iran] chanting “death to America” who have been most opposed to the deal,’ he said in a speech at American University. ‘They’re making common cause with the Republican Caucus.’

“So Republicans in Congress equal Revolutionary Guards in Tehran. Nice. Name-calling and immoral equivalence are always the best way to win over skeptics.

“In truth, Mr. Obama isn’t trying to persuade anyone. He’s trying to keep enough partisan Democratic support across the country so he can hold one-third of the House and Senate. . . . He’s essentially banking on the Senate’s Elizabeth Warren wing to save him from what is building into a bipartisan majority repudiation of the deal.”

The Journal editors then further criticized the Obama administration’s deal, pointing out, “This growing opposition flows from the accord itself, which looks worse the closer people inspect it. Take the deal’s financial windfall for Iran’s terrorist and military activities, which even Mr. Obama conceded Wednesday would benefit. The inflow from sanctions relief could approach $150 billion within 16 months. The President says most of the money will go to improve Iran’s economy, but this misjudges the regime’s priorities

“Consider the Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, which is the regime’s military and ideological spine and controls an estimated 20% of the Iranian economy. This includes perhaps half of all government-owned companies, such as construction firm Khatam Al-Anbia, which is involved in building everything from city metros to oil pipelines; the Telecommunication Company of Iran, where an IRGC-controlled company has a 51% stake; and thousands of smaller front companies.

“‘To do business in Iran, foreign companies need an Iranian partner, which for large-scale projects often means firms controlled by the IRGC,’ Reuters’s Pariza Hafezi and Louis Charbonneau reported in July. That means the Revolutionary Guards will benefit from the one-time windfall when Iranian oil profits now held in escrow are released, and going forward as foreign companies race to get into the Iran market.”

They added, “Then there is the list of Iranian entities on which sanctions are to be lifted. That starts with the IRGC, including its air force and missile command. Sanctions are also lifted on the Qods (Jerusalem) Force, which currently props up the Assad regime in Syria and supplied Shiite militias in Iraq with the IEDs that killed hundreds of American GIs. As recently as 2011 the Qods Force was implicated in an attempt to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. by blowing up a restaurant in Washington, D.C.

“Ahmad Vahidi, the former Iranian defense minister wanted by Interpol for his role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, is also being taken off the sanctions list. So is Tidewater Middle East Co., an IRGC-owned port operator sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2011 because of its involvement in arms smuggling.

“And if containing Iran’s regional intimidation is a U.S. priority, why remove sanctions from Iran’s Cruise Missile Industry Group? In 2006 Hezbollah punched a hole in an Israeli ship stationed off Lebanon using an Iranian-supplied cruise missile based on a Chinese design. Iran could repeat this against American ships in the Persian Gulf.”

They concluded, “All of this is strange if the goal of the deal is strictly to contain Iran’s nuclear program, as Mr. Obama says it is. The details of the nuclear deal show that it also provides legal relief, and new financial resources and opportunities, for the instruments of Iran’s regional aggression. The deal sets Iran on the path to getting a nuclear weapon and in the meantime it gives Iran the means to create far more trouble in the Middle East. No wonder it’s losing public support.”

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