With letter to Iran, Senate GOP breached protocol
In the closing days of the 1968 presidential election campaign, Richard Nixon had reason to be nervous.
The polls were tightening, as Democrats who had been fractured and disillusioned through most of the year started to drift into the column of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and other voters wondered whether the “new Nixon” was really all that new, but merely the same old “tricky Dick” they had always had their doubts about.
Scarred by the 1960 presidential election, which Nixon lost in the popular vote by one-tenth of 1 percent, and eager for any advantage, it’s been well established that emissaries from his campaign, almost certainly with the candidate’s approval, tried to derail peace talks in Vietnam by letting the South Vietnamese government know that if they dragged their feet, they would get better terms if Nixon were in the White House.
The peace talks ultimately foundered, the war dragged on for four more years and Nixon defeated Humphrey comfortably in the Electoral College, but it was a squeaker in the popular vote – the 511,000-vote margin that separated the two candidates was smaller than the margin between Al Gore and George W. Bush in the 2000 popular vote.
It was hard not to pick up echoes of the Nixon campaign’s trickery with the news that 47 Senate Republicans, including Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey, have sent a letter to officials in Iran, letting them know that whoever sits in the Oval Office after President Obama departs in January 2017 might not be kindly disposed to any deal that is struck, and could scrap it altogether.
With gobsmacking condescension, the signatories to the letter lecture the Iranians thusly: “It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system.”
Actually, there’s probably a pretty good chance that they do. Iranian leaders may be misguided on many counts, but there’s every likelihood that they have a whole passel of experts at their disposal who are well schooled in the way America is governed. Nevertheless, the letter continues that any deal that is reached between Iran and a group of international players that also includes Britain and Germany, could be undone by the next president “with the stroke of a pen” if Congress doesn’t also sign off on it.
While that’s not precisely true – it’s the president who ratifies treaties, with the Senate giving advice and consent – the intent of the letter is clear. Senate Republicans, and surely many of their colleagues in the House, hope to sabotage a pact that would prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued against the deal in a bellicose and unconvincing address to Congress last week. But Netanyahu and his boosters on Capitol Hill have failed to come up with any reasonable alternative. If the treaty is scuttled, there will be no inspection regime to make sure Iran is not cooking up a nuclear weapon. One gets the impression that Netanyahu and his fellow hard-liners want to proceed straight to a bombing campaign without any diplomatic do-si-do preceding it. If bombs fell on Iran, it would likely only forestall the development of a nuclear program there for a few years and further inflame passions in the Middle East.
And the Iranians are also wise to the tactics of Senate Republicans. Javad Zarif, the country’s foreign minister, shrugged off the letter, saying it “has no legal value and is mostly a propaganda ploy.” Some observers have also pointed out that the letter could have an effect opposite the one intended – it could make the Iranians take a deal now, because a better one might not be coming down the pike anytime soon.
It may not exactly represent an act of treason, but Senate Republicans have engaged in a stunning breach of protocol. It shows tremendous disrespect to the presidency and the current occupant of the office.
So much for the long-held notion that partisanship stops at the water’s edge.