Rand Paul’s Munich, by Justin Raimondo

From Justin Raimondo, at antiwar.com:

Rand Paul’s Munich

In signing the Cotton letter he’s become the Neville Chamberlain of the liberty movement

If you read the letter circulated by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), and signed by forty-seven GOP Senators, addressed to “the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” what’s striking is its condescending tone:

“It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system….”

Sounding like Miss Manners instructing a boorish host on the proper placement of table napkins, Cotton goes on to make a series of highly debatable assertions about the how the US Constitution regulates the making of international agreements and the role of Congress in the process. He reminds the Iranians that all treaties must be ratified by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, while neglecting to say how the as-yet-to-be-reached agreement with Iran qualifies as a treaty – say, in the same sense that the establishment of NATO did. This a technical legal point that is nevertheless significant: treaties have no time limit, but a principal objection to the pending agreement with Iran made by its opponents is that it is limited in duration to, at most, ten to fifteen years.

A “so-called congressional-executive agreement,” Sen. Cotton avers, also requires congressional approval: that President Obama will doubtless bypass Congress in this matter, however, is left unmentioned. Also ignored is the fact that the members of that august body will have no recourse but to sit there and take it. Many of the measures designed to isolate Iran can be lifted by executive order. Eventually, however, the President will have to come to Congress to lift the worst of the sanctions permanently, but by that time, as Dan Drezner points out in the Washington Post, the political and diplomatic consequences of reneging on the agreement are likely to deter Congress and whoever sits in the Oval Office from backtracking.

The letter, in short, is without any real substance: as Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif noted, it betrays a lack of understanding of international law, not to mention the recent history of US executive agreements with other nations – the overwhelming majority of which have never been subject to congressional approval. Zarif went on to point out that “the world is not the United States,” a geographical reality neocons like Sen. Cotton have trouble acknowledging. “If the current negotiation with P5+1 results in a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” Zarif observed, “it will not be a bilateral agreement between Iran and the US, but rather one that will be concluded with the participation of five other countries, including all permanent members of the Security Council, and will also be endorsed by a Security Council resolution.”

Will the United States risk alienating its allies and defying the Security Council in order to appease Benjamin Netanyahu? Sen. Cotton certainly hopes so, but the chances of this happening are close to nil.

The Cotton letter, said Zarif, is a “propaganda ploy,” but on whose behalf? Clearly it is a follow-up to Netanyahu’s speech before Congress and is designed to torpedo the ongoing negotiations between the United States and Iran. A shorter version might have read simply: “Are you sure you want to sign an agreement with these guys – when it will probably be rendered inoperative once we Republicans take the White House?”

Given that, the fact that among the signers were three prospective GOP presidential hopefuls – Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul – underscores the propagandistic nature of this ploy. That Rubio and Cruz signed on is hardly surprising: they have been among the most bombastic of the Republican field when it comes to foreign policy, never deviating from the Fox News-neocon party line. The real stunner was the conquest of the sometime anti-interventionist junior Senator from Kentucky.

I say “conquest” because, although he voted for sanctioning Iran in 2012, Sen. Paul has recently been a vocal opponent of imposing new sanctions, and has broken with his Republican colleagues on the whole question of how to deal with Tehran, averring that we must give diplomacy a chance. Less than two months ago, speaking at a forum for GOP presidential aspirants, he directly confronted Rubio and Cruz:

“Are you ready to send ground troops into Iran? Are you ready to bomb them? Are you ready to send in 100,000 troops?I’m a big fan of trying to exert and trying the diplomatic option as long as we can. If it fails, I will vote to resume sanctions and I would vote to have new sanctions. But if you do it in the middle of negotiations, you’re ruining it.”

If Sen. Paul is against “ruining it,” why did he sign a letter that seeks to do exactly that? Is he now ready to send ground troops into Iran? Is he ready to bomb them?

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/03/10/rand-pauls-munich/

To continue reading: Rand Paul’s Munich

See also: Rand Paul: Iran Letter Was Meant to Strengthen President’s Hand