Did 47 U.S. Senators
Just Commit Treason By Attempting to
Sabotage Iran Deal?
The backlash to the Iran letter continues.
By David Knowles
March 1, 2015 "ICH"
- "Bloomberg"
- The backlash
continued Tuesday after 47 Republican
senators
sent a signed letter to Iran's leaders
warning them against cutting a nuclear deal
with the Obama administration.
The letter, organized by
Senator Tom Cotton, a freshman from
Arkansas,
warned Iran that “we will consider any
agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons
program that is not approved by the Congress
as nothing more than an executive agreement
between President Obama and Ayatollah
Khamenei. The next president could revoke
such an executive agreement with the stroke
of a pen and future Congresses could modify
the terms of the agreement at any time.”
The New York Daily
News on Tuesday put photos of Cotton,
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Senator Ted
Cruz of Texas, and Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell on its front page along with
the boldfaced headline “TRAITORS.”
The Wall Street
Journal took down the letter in an
editorial Tuesday calling the deal with
Iran possibly “the security blunder of the
young century” and saying that Congress
should vote on it, “which is why it’s too
bad that Republican Senators took their eye
off that ball on Monday with a letter to the
government of Iran.”
MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski
also had harsh words for Cotton, criticizing
him a few minutes before he was scheduled to
appear on Morning Joe (where he
defended the letter).
“If anyone had any
reservations that what the Republicans did
when they brought Benjamin Netanyahu to
Congress to address Congress was not an
effort to undercut the president, this then
could perhaps seal the deal in your mind
that everything they do is focused in almost
an obsessive and destructive way to
undermine the president and to undermine the
president’s effort to get a deal as opposed
to going to war,” she said.
White House press
secretary Josh Earnest on Monday said the
letter's goal was to “undermine”
negotiations with Iran, but also noted that
if the Obama administration reached an
agreement over Iran's nuclear program that
it would not be a treaty subject to
congressional ratification.
Senate Minority Leader
Harry Reid, meanwhile, said it was highly
unusual for a political party to insert
itself into a foreign-policy negotiation in
opposition to the president.
“Republicans are
undermining our commander-in-chief while
empowering the ayatollahs,” he said from the
Senate floor Monday. “We should always have
robust debate about foreign policy, but it's
unprecedented for one political party to
directly intervene in an international
negotiation with the sole goal of
embarrassing the president of the United
States.”
On Twitter, observerswere
quick to call the move by Senate Republicans
“treason.”
This is
treason, GOP Senators. You're
being treasonous. You are
traitors. Literally.
Whoever, owing
allegiance to the United States, levies
war against them or adheres to their
enemies, giving them aid and comfort
within the United States or elsewhere,
is guilty of treason and shall suffer
death, or shall be imprisoned not less
than five years and fined under this
title but not less than $10,000; and
shall be incapable of holding any office
under the United States.
While Iran has been a U.S.
enemy for some time, no official war
declaration exists. It's hard to see how the
negotiation of a nuclear deal, or the
opposition to one, would rise to the level
of treason. What has been perfectly clear
since the start of the year is that Congress
and the president see the Iran issue through
different lenses. From the invitation of
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to
speak in the House of Representatives
without first consulting Obama, to the
letter sent to Iranian leaders on Monday,
the level of distrust between the two
parties has reached new levels.
Alison Elkin
contributed to this report.
See also -
GOP Presidential
Hopefuls Add Their Support To Senate
Republican Letter On Iran:
Not to be outdone by their potential GOP
rivals in the Senate -- Rand Paul (Ky.), Ted
Cruz (Texas) and Marco Rubio (Fla.), who all
signed the letter -- Louisiana Gov. Bobby
Jindal and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry both
announced their support for the letter on
Tuesday.
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