NY Times: Iran nuclear negotiations doomed by Israeli-owned US Congress

By Cyrus Safdari | Iran Affairs | March 10, 2013

Imagine my surprise when I see an editorial in the NY Times that I can actually agree with! The NY Times editors typically have the most misleading and inaccurate claims about Iran, even repeatedly referring to a non-existent “Iranian nuclear weapons program” but today they have an editorial entitled “Congress gets in the way on Iran” in which they complain that fresh Congressional sanctions on Iran harm the nuclear negotiations. More significantly, it indirectly cites AIPAC, Israel and Netanyahu as the motivation behind the measures.

Way back in Jan 2012, I asked a simple question: even assuming for the mere sake of argument that the Obama administration is serious about wanting a deal with Iran and isn’t just playing “rope-a-dope” with Iran in the hopes of eventually achieving regime-change there (which I think is totally the case, a policy continued and adopted by Obama from the Bush admin, which is why Dennis Ross was initially brought  on board from the Bush administration), since any sort of viable nuclear deal with Iran is going to require the lifting of sanctions, and since most of the US sanctions on Iran are imposed by Congress and not the President, then is the Obama administration actually capable of delivering on any such deal with Iran?

The answer, of course, is a big fat “No.” The US Congress is bought-and-paid for by Israel. Obama can barely get his Def Sec nominee Hagel past Congress, and the fellow had to literally debase himself and practically swear never-ending fealty to Israel before he squeaked by the nomination committee. (Apparently Israel was mentioned during the Hagel hearings more often than Afghanistan, where US troops are still fighting an actual war.)

So, like I said before and before then too these talks will in all likelihood die too. Sorry. That’s how the world is.

Why? The Israelis and AIPAC haven’t suddenly disappeared, folks. They’re still running the show in DC, and will be doing so for the foreseeable future, as long as US election laws allow money to talk louder than votes and as long as most American voters can barely find their own country (let alone Iran) on a map. Like I said before, the US-Iran standoff is a symptom of a much greater pathology: the dysfunctional relation between Israel and the US, in which the “tail wags the dog.”

At some point, maybe, the burden of this albatross around the US’s neck may become so great that people will wake up and throw it off. There are even encouraging signs. After all not so long ago AIPAC lobbyists boasted of their ability to operate in the dark, comparing themselves to night-blooming flowers, but today the excess and malign influence of Israel on US foreign policy (especially over Iran) is part of the mainstream discussion. No longer is mentioning the phrase “pro-Israel lobby” cause to have the utterer classified with various lunatics and genuine or accused anti-Semites as in the past. And like I said before, the more Israel pushes Iran into the spotlight, the more it exposes itself too.

But they still own Congress, so don’t hold your breath about any real deal coming out of these nuclear negotiations yet. Won’t happen. Rest assured.

Another view

• The P5+1 Meeting with Iran (alethonews.wordpress.com)

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