Twenty-six United States Senators have introduced a bill that could negatively impact the current negotiations to end the Iranian nuclear threat. (CLICK HERE to read the so-called “NUCLEAR WEAPON FREE IRAN ACT.”)
Dov Waxman, a CUNY professor of political science, has just published a piece in Haaretz (“Where’s the all-powerful Israel lobby now?“) to make the important point that the American-Jewish pro-Israel community is divided on this issue.
The White House plus ten Senate committee chairpersons — including (Jewish) Senators Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer and Carl Levin — have announced their opposition to such a measure. These ten key Senators state in a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid “that new sanctions only play into the hands of those in Iran who are most eager for negotiations to fail.” We agree.
These are the 26 Senators sponsoring this ill-considered bill:
• Robert Menendez (NJ)
• Mark Kirk (IL)
• Charles Schumer (NY)
• Lindsey Graham (SC)
• Ben Cardin (MD)
• John McCain (AZ)
• Robert Casey (PA)
• Marco Rubio (FL)
• Chris Coons (DE)
• John Cornyn (TX)
• Richard Blumenthal (CT)
• Kelly Ayotte (NH)
• Mark Begich (AK)
• Bob Corker (TN)
• Mark Pryor (AR)
• Susan Collins (ME)
• Mary Landrieu (LA)
• Jerry Moran (KS)
• Kristen Gillibrand (NY)
• Pat Roberts (KS)
• Mark Warner (VA)
• Mike Johanns (NE)
• Kay Hagan (NC)
• Ted Cruz (TX)
• Joe Donnelly (IN)
• Roy Blunt (MO)
• Cory Booker (NJ)
We ask the Senate not to pass new sanctions against Iran at this sensitive time. If negotiations ultimately fail, new sanctions will remain an option. But they would surely be counterproductive at this moment.
Please contact your home-state Senators to urge that this resolution not proceed! You may read the text of Partners for Progressive Israel’s statement on this matter by clicking here.
The Iran deal negotiated by this Administration reminds me of the Neville Chamberlin negotiations with Hitler that resulted in his return to Britain in 1938 proclaiming “Peace in our Time”. That war started in full mode 2 years later and resulted in 52 million people killed before it was over.
Anybody care to estimate the number of people likely to be killed (mostly here in America and in Israel) WHEN Iran gets the nuclear bomb and the ICBM capability to deliver? You know you have a huge problem when foes Israel and Saudi Arabia have discussions on what do with a nuclear armed Iran.
Criticism of the interim agreement with Iran is ill-informed. This temporary agreement freezes Iran’s nuclear program and monitors its compliance while negotiating limits that will prevent the development of nuclear weapons. In other words, there’s no risk in this deal.
I’ve read that the relief provided Iran in the interim amounts to a rollback of somewhere between five and twenty percent of the monetary value of sanctions, an incentive to keep Iran negotiating. If a final deal is not reached, we can return to stronger sanctions. But if new sanctions are voted now, they are likely to undermine this promising effort to peacefully curtail the Iranian nuclear threat. This would make no sense.