The Republicans’ Adolescent and Dangerous Iranian Show

Before anything, I’d like to salute the seven American senators of the American Republican Party who did not join the 47 participants in torpedoing Democratic President Barack Obama’s diplomacy. The 47 wrote a letter this week to the “Iranian leadership,” explaining that the Senate had the right to international treaties signed by the president and pointed out that when Obama leaves the White House in 2017 his successor could revoke any accord relating to the Iranian nuclear problem. In sum, the Republican senators advised — “tipped off” — Ayatollah Khamenei that he should not trust President Obama.

To be didactic, the executive needs the consent of the Senate to ratify an international treaty. However, the preference of the White House, over any part, is called an executive order. That does not need the approval of the Senate. On the other hand, it can be reversed by a successor. The situation is complicated, because for the agreement to be fulfilled, the Senate needs to repeal the sanctions it had approved against Iran, as part of an international package.

The letter was a theatrical initiative of freshman Tom Cotton, the youngest in the Senate at 37 years old, a species of Sarah Palin with a Harvard diploma. The letter shows that the Republican Party now directs its heavy guns towards the foreign front, after six years of systematically blocking Obama’s domestic initiatives on the home front. It is the party of no, no!

The other Republican focus on the foreign front is reactivating U.S.A.-Cuba diplomatic relations. The increased Republican aggressiveness is the fruit of the Republican victory last November. The party controls the two houses of Congress, and the Senate has a more important role in foreign policy.

First, it was the blatant invitation by the Speaker of the House John Boehner to the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, to speak at a joint session of Congress against the nuclear accord with Iran; and now it is this letter. In political terms, breaking the situation down into smaller parts to make sense of it, the president ultimately wants to invest in foreign policy in his final two years in office and the Republicans will do everything to torpedo his ambitions.

In strategic terms, however, it is a disaster. This Republican sabotage can destroy bi-partisanship in American foreign policy and dangerously diminish the bargaining power of the president, who is constitutionally charged with conducting America’s interests in foreign countries.

The letter and the Netanyahu’s speech, in truth, weakened the U.S.A., projecting divisions and ambiguities in the most powerful country in the world abroad. Many Democratic congressmen are against the White House’s bet on a nuclear accord with Iran. However, the Republicans’ adolescent belligerency forces these Democrats to align themselves with the president out of party loyalty. The letter is manna to the hardline in Tehran, who are also doing what they can to torpedo an agreement. If there is a collapse of the laborious pattern of nuclear negotiation, which involves the international community, Iran can blame the American Congress.

As for Obama, the nickname “lame duck” increasingly seems to make sense. He is a president whose margin to maneuver is shrinking more and more within and outside the country.