Free Republic

Senate will hold a nomination vote for Willie E. May at 5:30pm and has delayed the NLRB vote. Negotiators are still working on whether to hold votes on the Cotton and Rubio amendments or if McConnell will invoke Cloture.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday accused Republicans of opposing the emerging Iran nuclear agreement not for policy reasons, but because they simply want to hurt Democrats, and President Barack Obama in particular. “Before this compromise even came to the floor, certain Senate Republicans were determined to destroy it,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “A number of Senate Republicans are prioritizing presidential politics over national security. Others are simply trying to undermine President Obama.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a prominent GOP voice against the Iran deal, has said he wants to require it to force Iran to...

A series of victories by Islamist rebels against the Syrian regime is raising the prospect of a sea change in the momentum of a war in which the endurance of Bashar al-Assad has for years seemed to many as a given. Substantial territorial losses by the regime in the northern city of Jisr-el-Shugur and beyond, after the city of Idlib also fell to rebels, coupled with a relatively successful series of advances around the southwest of Damascus, are the result of new levels of cooperation among rebel groups that have spent the past years fighting each other for supremacy, to...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with a six-member bipartisan US Congressional delegation on Monday, including Rep. Karen Bass (D-California) who was among 58 members of Congress who skipped his controversial speech to Congress in March. One government official said that while the speech in Congress did come up during the meeting, the main focus was on the Iranian nuclear negotiations. Netanyahu is continuing to be outspoken in his opposition to the Iran deal. Explaining her decision to skip the Netanyahu address, Bass issued a statement prior to the March address saying that she is a strong supporter of the US...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may be forced to end debate on the Iran bill early this week, marking the first time he has shut down the open amendment process that was a central promise of his bid for control of the chamber. Sen. Tom Cotton's surprise move on Thursday to force votes on his own amendment and one from Sen. Marco Rubio highlights the perils of McConnell's commitment to an open amendment process. When Sen. Harry Reid was leader, he often "filled the tree" in Hill-speak, essentially preventing members from filing amendments without his express written permission. McConnell's stated...

Cristian Jereghi is a Russian citizen. For a few more days, at any rate. A born and bred Muscovite, he is about to receive Ukrainian citizenship as a reward for fighting pro-Russian separatists in the county's east. Jereghi, 25, says he decided to break ties with his native country after witnessing firsthand what he describes as Russia's aggressive actions in Ukraine. "I'm renouncing my Russian citizenship," he says. "I will send my passport back to the Russian Consulate in a pretty envelope." While a number of Russian citizens are known to have joined the insurgency in eastern Ukraine, reports of...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met US Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), who chairs the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and told him at the start of their meeting: "I welcome you here in that spirit of friendship between Israel and the United States. That doesn't mean we don't have differences of view. On the matter of the pending Iran deal, we view things differently. We think that the goal of the Iran deal should not be just to reach any deal. It should be to block Iran's path to the bomb. And...

The GOP’s destructive Vietnam mythology: How the right’s self-glorifying delusions led to decades of avoidable war It only took about five years from the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, for the American right to succeed in burying the moment under mounds of revisionist horse shit. Ronald Reagan, speaking at a campaign appearance in the summer of 1980, said, It is time that we recognized that [the American War in Vietnam] was, in truth, a noble cause… We dishonor the memory of 50 thousand young Americans who died in that cause when we give way to feelings of guilt...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on its 30th anniversary.

In a rare interview with Israeli television, US Secretary of State John Kerry pledged Saturday that inspections to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons would stay in place “forever,” and accused critics of the world powers’ emerging deal with Iran of “hysteria.” Evidently seeking to placate the public in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been a bitter and relentless critic of the deal, Kerry pledged: “We will not sign a deal that does not close off Iran’s pathways to a bomb and that doesn’t give us the confidence — to all of our experts, in fact to global...

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee opposes amendments it would “ordinarily support” to a bill mandating congressional review of an Iran nuclear deal. An AIPAC official confirmed Friday that the group had earlier in the week sent a letter to all Senate offices urging them to “refrain from supporting provisions that could harm” bipartisan support for the bill. Noah Pollak, the director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, which backs some of the amendments, posted a copy of the letter on Twitter on Thursday. “We know that senators will offer amendments on a wide range of initiatives, many of which...

Iran would have enough enriched uranium within three months to be able to make up to eight nuclear weapons if negotiations with the international community blow up, Vice President Joe Biden said late Thursday, noting that "the path has already been paved" for that outcome. Biden's remarks at a dinner for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy played off concerns by critics, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that the Obama administration is negotiating an agreement that paves the path for Iran to get a nuclear weapon. "Let's get something straight so we don't kid each other," Biden said....

Not since Baryshnikov has a foreigner so captivated a New York audience. “A Conversation with H.E. DR. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran” played the other day at NYU. The show ran for just 90 minutes, but reviews were spectacular. Give this man a Tony: Zarif slayed ’em. “Demonstrating suave fluency in English and a familiarity with American history and law,” wrote the New York Times, “Iran’s foreign minister said Wednesday that the United States would risk global ostracism if it were to scrap a signed international pact that resolves the Iranian nuclear dispute.” Zarif,...

Sen. Tom Cotton is insisting on simple majority votes on contentious amendments to legislation to provide congressional review of any final nuclear deal with Iran, apparently stymieing the possibility of moving forward, at least for now. The Arkansas Republican sought to line up a pair of amendments that supportive Democratic senators have said could cause them to remove support for the bill. One of those, sponsored by Cotton, would require Iran to allow inspectors full access to suspicious sites. The other, led by Florida Republican Marco Rubio, would require Tehran to recognize Israel’s right to exist. “I think some of...

Chinese strategists see a window of strategic opportunity for China early in the 21st century, though they haven’t publicly outlined the basis for that view. But we can make a good stab at it. Firstly, an air of inevitability is important in winning battles. While China is perceived to have a strong, growing economy that is crushing all before it, that perception of inevitability rubs off on China’s military adventures. To use that perception, China has to attack before its economy contracts due to the bursting of its real estate bubble. This explains the current rush to build the bases...

The US Senate rejected on Wednesday an effort to make any lifting of US sanctions on Iran part of an international nuclear agreement dependent on President Barack Obama certifying that Iran is not supporting acts of terrorism against Americans. With some votes still being counted, 54 senators had opposed a proposed amendment to a bill requiring an Iran nuclear deal to be reviewed by Congress, guaranteeing that it would not reach the 60-vote threshold required to move ahead.

Senator Rubio took the floor at 3:15pm and tried to bring 2 of his amendments up - one for Iran to recognize Israel's right to exist, another that the deal should be what the White House said it was in fact sheets earlier this month. Senator Cardin objected saying he is trying to work on an amendment on Iran's terrorism and other amendments. Rubio responded saying he agreed at insistence of other Senators to hold off his amendments in Committee upon assurances they would be heard on the floor. Said it was fine if his amendments aren't heard today but...

As the nuclear negotiations with Iran reach their final phase, President Obama increasingly finds himself at odds with reality. Although the United States has worked for years to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons while limiting Tehran’s attempts to be a regional hegemon, the president’s desperation to secure a deal ­- at whatever cost -­ places both of these goals at serious risk. Rather than stand firm against Iran’s regional expansionism and its constantly shifting nuclear redlines, the president has gone to great lengths to avoid alienating Tehran and repeatedly revised his own definition of success. The result is that...

Today, there is no greater threat to U.S. national security than the prospect of a nuclear Iran. Led by theocratic zealots who have pledged to “annihilate Israel” and who regularly lead chants of “Death to America,” an Iran with nuclear weapons poses an unacceptably high risk of murdering millions of Americans or millions of our allies. For that reason, the top priority for the Senate should be to stop a bad Iran deal. The Senate is now considering the Iran Nuclear Review Agreement Act (Corker-Cardin), which provides that any Iran deal must be submitted to Congress. This legislation started out...

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif calls it “laughable” that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has become everybody’s nonproliferation guru.” “He’s sitting on 400 warheads, nuclear warheads, acquired in violation of the NPT (non-proliferation treaty),” to which Israel isn’t a party, he tells an audience at New York University. Zarif says that the greatest threat to global security is nuclear weapons possessed by the P5+1 world powers, and next is Israel’s nuclear weapons. He says that he would welcome Saudi Arabia having the same arrangements and enrichment program as Iran under the NPT. “It’s their right.”