Sen. Tom Cotton Zarif takes on Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, challenging him to come to Washington, D.C. to “debate Iran’s record of tyranny, treachery, & terror” and mocking Zarif’s “cowardly character,” as exhibited by how he “hid in US during Iran-Iraq war while peasants & kids were marched to die.”
As the June 30 deadline for a final nuclear deal with Iran approaches, almost 30 U.S. states, including California are keeping tight grips on their own sanctions on the Iranian regime–separate from those imposed by the federal government.
At a speaking event in Washington, D.C., Monday evening, Carly Fiorina, former HP CEO and possible 2016 candidate, said she isn’t sure what side some of the parties are on at the negotiating table regarding the Iran deal.
Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), appeared on Fox News Sunday saying discrepancies on the political framework agreement between the U.S and Iran reveal the necessity for congressional review of any final deal.
Hamid Baeidinejad, the Iranian foreign ministry’s director general for political and international security affairs, told Iran’s state-controlled Press TV on Tuesday that the issue of sanctions against the Ayatollah’s regime has been “resolved.”
The Iranian regime apparently believes it can extract additional concessions from world powers as the deadline for a March 31 deal approaches, according to a report by Bloomberg News from Lausanne, Switzerland. Iran wants UN sanctions to be lifted up front–not kept in place for several years while international monitors measure Iranian compliance, as the U.S. and other powers (Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany) have said was a non-negotiable provision.
U.S. officials are concerned Iranian militants currently fighting ISIS in Iraq with help from U.S. air power could eventually turn on American troops in the country.
367 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have sent President Barack Obama a letter expressing concern about the ongoing negotiations with Iran towards a nuclear deal that would keep its nuclear infrastructure in place, as the regime continues to hide information about its nuclear program from international inspectors. Unlike a recent letter sent by 47 Senators to the Iranian leadership, this letter is bipartisan, and more diplomatic–but no less opposed to a “bad deal.”
Executions are rising sharply in Iran, reaching a 12-year high in 2014, according to the United Nations’s Human Rights Council. The UN called this “deeply troubling” and further criticized Iran for not living up to promises that it would protect ethnic and religious minorities, according to a report at Voice of America News.
Even Politico, a reliably leftist media outlet that has done its best to support Barack Obama from pillar to post, is now tacitly acknowledging that hard-line Senator Tom Cotton has won his battle with the administration over the letter he authored to Iran that was signed by 46 other GOP senators.
Politico reports that while Democratic senators attack Tom Cotton over his letter to Iran, they support his position on reviewing the agreement the White House hopes to make with the Islamist nation whose leadership has vowed multiple times to annihilate the state of Israel.
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) declared that President Obama wants the Iran deal to be “the cornerstone of his legacy” for the president’s second term like Obamacare was for his first term on Tuesday’s “Kelly File” on the Fox News Channel.
During a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House, President Barack Obama addressed the decision not to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Washington, D.C. next month, which includes an address
A bill that would levy tough new sanctions on Iran if it fails to sign an agreement to curb its nuclear program cleared a Senate committee on Thursday. But lawmakers are holding off on a full Senate vote to see whether diplomatic negotiations yield a deal.
For Goldberg, Obama can do no wrong when it comes to Israel–and only Israel. In his efforts to cover for Obama, he has fumbled away much of his credibility on the issue. There is not much for Netanyahu to fear from the habitual criticism of a pundit who has so clearly departed from reality. But as an example of how American Jewish liberals are tying themselves in knots trying to reconcile their partisan loyalties with the facts of Obama’s failures on Israel, there is no finer specimen.
Partial Transcript Courtesy of ABC News of Sunday’s Freedom Partners 2016 Presidential Forum with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL), moderated by ABC’s Jonathan Karl, on the issue of Iran sanctions Transcript as
Israel’s Army Radio, via the Jerusalem Post, reports that local sources claim U.S. President Barack Obama arranged the leak of a Mossad report on the Iran nuclear talks as an act of revenge against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for agreeing to speak to Congress in February about radical Islam and the Iranian threat. The Mossad report allegedly suggests new sanctions would cause talks to collapse, and its release is calculated to suggest disagreement with Netanyahu.
In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama repeated his threat from last year’s address to veto any new Iran sanctions passed by Congress. He also claimed that Iran’s nuclear program had been stalled, and pledged to reach a deal by the end of the year. The language was almost the same as he used in 2014, though he failed to stop Iran’s nuclear program or to reach a deal over the past year, and in fact extended talks twice past the original deadline agreed one year ago today.
Everyone involved seems to be trying to put the best face on it, but Barack Obama went so far as to suggest senior Democrats like Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who take a hard line on Iran, are doing so purely to appease their donors.
Obama claimed: “What was remarkable was that when I came into office, the world was divided around this issue. Iran was united. Through some very strong diplomatic work, we united the world and isolated Iran.” Obama also claimed: “The agreement has held and negotiations have been serious. We have not lost ground. Iran has not accelerated its program during the time these negotiations have taken place.” All of those claims, however, are false–and dangerously so.
Friday at a joint press conference with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, President Barack Obama said, “Congress needs to show patience,” and let him negotiate with Iran before lawmakers go ahead with a bill increasing sanctions,
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced on Tuesday that Iran has broken ground on two new nuclear power plants in the country’s Bushehr province, Iranian state-news agencies reported.
Iran has denied reports that it reached an agreement with the United States to reduce its ability to make nuclear weapons.
Sunday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s News Headquarters,” Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) said in January the Republican-led senate has “a shot at” a “veto-proof majority” vote on increasing sanctions for Iran. “On January 6, the new Republican senate takes office. Majority
