John Kerry dismissed Corker's fantasies about a world
where Iran's nuclear knowledge can be made to magically disappear.…
Right at the start of the Senate hearings on the nuclear deal with Iran
– at which US Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest
Moniz and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will testify – in what can hardly
be called a surprise, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Corker (R-TN) found fault with an agreement which has been widely
praised everywhere but in Israel and Congress.
Corker began the meeting by telling
Secretary of State John Kerry, “Not unlike a hotel guest that leaves
only with a hotel bathrobe on his back, I believe that you’ve been
fleeced.”
According to Corker, the Obama administration has
shown “disdain” for US allies in the region (jargon for Israel),
claiming that “if we had dealt with dismantling their nuclear program
they wouldn’t be reacting as they did.” Corker forgets the U.S. has
other allies, and that our foreign policy does not revolve around – or
function for the sole benefit of – Israel.
According to Corker, far from curbing any potential
Iranian nuclear weapons program, the administration has actually made it
possible for “a state sponsor of terrorism” to create nuclear weapons.
On the contrary, pointed out Kerry, rejecting the
treaty would be giving Iran “a great big green light” to produce nuclear
weapons. After all, what measures would be in force to stop them short
of war?
Clearly, this meeting is more about Republican shrieking points than our shared world of facts, something about which
Kerry was quick to remind him:
Kerry told Corker that he apparently believed in
some “sort of unicorn arrangement involving Iran’s complete
capitulation.” In other words, Kerry dismissed Corker’s fantasies about a
world where Iran’s nuclear knowledge can be made to magically
disappear:
“The fact is that Iran now has extensive experience
with nuclear fuel cycle technology. We can’t bomb that knowledge away.
Nor can we sanction that knowledge away.”
This should hardly need be said, but these are Republicans we are talking about here. They’re not scientists, after all.
And Kerry made clear that “the result will be the
United States of America walking away from every one of the restrictions
we have achieved.”
“We will have squandered the best chance we have to solve this problem through peaceful means.”
Which is hardly a problem for chickenhawks, who are
always eager to send innocent young men and women to die for their
ideological causes and whatever war profiteering they can get out of
foreign adventurism.
It is clear that Republicans don’t want to deal with the real world, but rather with what they want to be, which is not something relate-able to other Americans, let alone the rest of the world.
Obama’s achievement in bringing together a coalition
to force Iran to the negotiating table cannot be understated, and the
resultant deal is too important to be destroyed by Republicans who have
no viable alternative to diplomacy save a war nobody wants to fight but
them.
Congress has 56 days to give and up or down vote on the deal, not that they can realistically hope to stop it.
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