Outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) both praised and chastised fellow Democrat and Secretary of State John Kerry during Tuesday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. On Iran, Boxer said point-blank that Iran cannot be trusted “for one second.” She then went on to clarify her belief that while the people of Iran could be trusted, the government and regime cannot be.
Secretary of State John Kerry told the House Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday that the U.S. should be wary of trusting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings on Iran, because Netanyahu had also backed the Iraq War. Kerry’s remarks were hypocritical, since he also supported the war. And they raise the disturbing suggestion, beloved of conspiracy theorists, that Israel is dragging the U.S. to war. Yet it is worth asking whether Kerry’s criticism has merit.
Former Harvard Law School professor and renowned defense attorney Alan Dershowitz has slammed President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats over their efforts to undermine Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress next week. In an op-ed to be published in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Dershowitz accuses “Obama of direct intrusion on the power of Congress and on the constitutional separation of powers” in his objections to the speech.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst has reversed its recently announced policy of banning foreign students from Iran who wish to enroll in advanced graduate courses with content related to the development of nuclear capabilities.
President Obama and his administration have implied that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s acceptance of an invitation to speak before Congress is a violation of protocol.
Secretary of State John Kerry held a surprise meeting Sunday with his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, in Munich–the city made infamous for “appeasement” after the western powers granted Hitler part of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet that he intended to resist the deal that Kerry and Zarif were striking.
The purported deal would offer the U.S. only 20% of what it wants, and would seem to confirm reports from Israeli sources last week that Iran will receive 80% of what it wants. Once, the U.S. had agreed that a bad deal would be worse than none.
On the one-year anniversary of the start of talks with Iran, and as President Barack Obama prepares to give his State of the Union address, Russia has signed a military deal with Iran. The agreement covers “includes expanded counter-terrorism cooperation, exchanges of military personnel for training purposes and an understanding for each country’s navy to more frequently use the other’s ports,” the AP reports.
