The New York Times has a piece up titled “Iran Assails U.S. Plan for a Vote in Congress,” saying that the Senate’s interference in the Iran negotiations is already having a negative effect, just as the National Iranian American Council warned us that it would.
We faulted the Times yesterday for leaving the Israel angle out of the Congressional deliberations, but today it touches on that question. The last three paragraphs of the story quote an Israeli minister, Yuval Steinitz, saying that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu effected the the bill that was passed unanimously by Senate Foreign Relations on Tuesday, granting Congress time to review the deal, by giving that speech to Congress on March 3:
In Israel, officials welcomed the compromise reached in Washington, with Yuval Steinitz, the minister of intelligence and strategic affairs, describing the congressional move as “an achievement for Israeli policy.”
He credited the March 3 speech in Congress by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “decisive” in developing the bill, which Mr. Steinitz called “a very important element in preventing a bad deal.”
And yet the Times also gives credence to the Senators’ reservations about the deal:
Republicans and some Democrats in Congress, highly suspicious of Iran’s motivations, have expressed worry that provisions of the framework agreement are too lenient toward Iran and would leave it with the capacity to divert nuclear energy enrichment to make bombs, despite Iran’s guarantees that its purposes are peaceful.
Are the senators genuinely that worried about Iran’s motivations? Or do they have their own motivations?
Later on in the same newspaper, we discover that Senator Robert Menendez, a member of Senate Foreign Relations and a force in the congressional pressure on the Iran deal, has raised $431,000 for his defense fund against federal bribery charges– “from an array of political interests, including real estate developers, Cuban-American political donors and pro-Israel activists.”
On the Times list of contributors is “David Steiner, who was president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, a pro-Israel group.”
The New Jersey Record reported last month that pro-Israel activists were coming out in droves for Menendez because he was taking Obama on over Iran:
Several pro-Israel activists said people were motivated by the possibility that anonymously sourced reports of Menendez’s facing criminal charges are linked to the Paramus Democrat’s criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of nuclear talks with Iran and relaxation of restrictions on Cuba.
“The majority of people I’ve spoken with feel he’s getting a bad rap, that the prosecution has political overtones to it,” said Ben Chouake, president of Englewood Cliffs-based NORPAC, a committee that raises money for Democrats and Republicans who support Israel. “On this particular matter, even Republicans will be supporting Bob Menendez.”
Menendez already raised nearly $900,000 for legal costs between April and December last year, and more than $100,000 of that came from ardent Israel supporters.
This raises a real question about the Times’s coverage of the Congressional opposition to the Iran deal. Do these legislators all want political contributions from the Israel lobby?
Rachel Maddow asked a similar question the other night and didn’t answer it.
“It is kind of exciting just in structural terms to see Congress decide to care. But why this and only this? Constitutionally the administration sets foreign policy of the Untied States and negotiates on behalf of our country… It is strange, though, deeply strange that they [Congress] have only discovered this interest in getting involved when it comes to the administration’s efforts to avert a new war.”
Americans are seeing this corruption before their eyes and speculating about its causes. Journalists owe it to their audiences to begin exposing why Congress is so responsive to a foreign power.
Iran also said that it wanted sanctions lifted before anything happens. This is how people stake out negotiating positions. I’m sure, given that Iran is apparently a rational power, that they understand that the United States, just like Iran, has a domestic political system. If the ayatollah is bent on signing a deal, it needs to mollify Iranian hardliners. If the pro-Iran lobby NIAC is unhappy, so be it. I think the bill actually makes a deal more probable, rather than less, because I don’t think the President would sign it if the situation were otherwise.
The notion that this is an example of “corruption” is laughable, and the case against Menendez has nothing to do with Iran, in my view; Menendez is from New Jersey, which has a dysfunctional political culture, and there have been rumors of corruption since he was in Congress.
Overwhelmingly, Americans want Congress to have a role in affirming any agreement the President makes with Iran. That’s why the bill has bipartisan support, and why, ultimately, the White House will sign it. While the Executive Branch is paramount in foreign policy, Congress involving itself in foreign policy matters where there is this much public interest, and frankly, this much risk, is nothing new. It’s called democracy.
RE: “Journalists owe it to their audiences to begin exposing why Congress is so responsive to a foreign power.” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: It is very unlikely to ever significantly happen in the mainstream/corporate media!
FROM WIKIPEDIA [Manufacturing Consent]:
SOURCE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Political_Economy_of_the_Mass_Media
* P.S. REGARDING “WITHOUT OVERT COERCION”, SEE THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE ON SHELDON WOLIN’S “INVERTED TOTALITARIANISM” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
RE: the photo of Netanyahu
MY OBSERVATION: So, Netanyahu wasn’t content to just ‘give us the finger’ – he had to give us a “twofer”. Incredible! ! !
That’s so rude!
The finger – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_finger
Thanks for the ongoing coverage on the coverage. It’s fits and starts, followed by return to hasbara central.
O/T, Yahoo News has this report up about coalition building in Tel Aviv: http://news.yahoo.com/israel-coalition-govt-talks-expand-left-report-151828826.html
It appears Netanyahu is having trouble getting Bennett and Lieberman to agree, having given up too much, from their perspective, to get Kahlon and the religious parties, so he keeps floating rumors of talks with Herzog about a unity government (unity in air quotes because he’s also floating the notion that his partner Livni would not be welcome, and Herzog has stated he will serve in opposition). Herzog denies having such talks, but rumors of them have the effect of further disempowering the extreme right-wingers, in an effort to force them to be more realistic (it was their base Netanyahu stole with his last minute racist/feamongering rants).
This report repeats the threat of a unity government, but also includes the new threat of “even calling new elections,” which seems to signal some desperation on Netanyahu’s part. First, he doesn’t have the government yet to disband, and Rivlin could ask Herzog to form the government, if Netanyahu fails to get his right-wing dream government sewn together. Second, since firing Lapid and Livni and calling for new elections to secure a solid right-wing government, to paraphrase Hirohito, the situation has not necessarily developed to Netanyahu’s advantage. Obama has become more formidable in opposition to him, as Netanyahu against the advice of the sagest American Jews made highly partisan and Congressional the US’s ongoing support for Israel, and the P5+1 have emerged in unity on Obama’s side in that same dispute. He depends upon fear among the right wing of terrorists and Islamic would-be annihilators of Israel, and instead, Netanyahu’s behavior since calling elections is alienating the rest of the world from its traditional support for Israel, giving Israelis enhanced basis to fear isolation.
Could the right-wingers who flocked in fear to Likud on the last election day be driven to do the same again, if Netanyahu couldn’t get a government formed with his more-right-wing partners, whose demands precipitate still another election?
I too noticed Rachel tip-toeing up to that topic, and leaving it as a question. And it is a very logical question.
And I fully agree “Journalists owe it to their audiences to begin exposing why Congress is so responsive to a foreign power.” That would entail exposing their employers. Dan Rather reported reporters don’t need a memo to know what to spike. Directions are given indirectly.