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Home Front: WoT

Menendez questions efforts to revive Iran nuke deal, signaling trouble for Biden

2022-02-03

[IsraelTimes] NJ Democrat, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calls for greater pressure on Tehran, asks what point is of continued talks: ’What exactly are we trying to salvage?’

US Senator Robert Menendez launched a lacerating expression of no confidence in the Biden administration, the same old faces in slightly different places, the same old ideas, the same old graft
...the pack of self-imagined masterminds of strategy and intrigue at the service of the Biden Crime Family and a grateful nation...
’s efforts to reenter the Iran
Iran

...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites....
nuclear deal, a sign that Congress will make what has been a rocky road even rockier.

Bless the man for seeing clearly.

"At this point, we seriously have to ask what exactly are we trying to salvage?" said Menendez, speaking Tuesday evening on the Senate floor.

Menendez is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and will have the power to exact considerable oversight over the reentry of the United States into the deal, which trades sanctions relief for Iran’s rollback of its nuclear program.

US President Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S. Being a self-defined foreign policy whiz kid means never having to say you're sorry...
wants to reenter the deal, brokered in 2015 by the B.O. regime when he was vice president and squelched under Donald Trump
...His ancestors didn't own any slaves...
, because he sees it as the most efficient means of keeping Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons power.

Menendez said he was optimistic at first about Biden’s plans to reenter the deal as long as Iran agreed to extend its nuclear enrichment rollback provisions and expand the deal to cover missile delivery systems.

However,
a person who gets all wrapped up in himself makes a mighty small package...
Iran has proven recalcitrant especially since the election last year of a hard-line government under President Ebrahim Raisi, and Menendez wondered what the point was of continued negotiations to reenter the deal.

"I have yet to hear any parameters of ’longer’ or ’stronger’ terms or whether that is even a feasible prospect," he said in an hour-long speech. "And even when it seemed a constructive agreement might be possible last summer, upon taking office, the Raisi government abandoned all previous understandings and, as I mentioned, made absolutely clear that Iran’s ballistic missiles and regional proxy networks are ’not negotiable.’"

Menendez called on Biden to institute greater pressure on Iran, something the administration has been reluctant to do, fearing that will cut off any chance of reentering into the deal.

"These new efforts should include creative diplomatic initiatives, stricter sanctions enforcement, and a steely determination from Congress to back up President Joe Biden
...... 46th president of the U.S. Sleazy Dem machine politician, paterfamilias of the Biden Crime Family, the guy who bungled Afghanistan......
’s declaration that Iran will ’never get a nuclear weapon on my watch’," he said.

The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, wary of Biden reentering a deal that it opposed in 2015, retweeted a video of Menendez’s speech, calling it an "important statement."

Critics of the speech included NIAC Action, a group representing Iranian Americans who seek to deescalate tensions between Iran and the United States. Menendez has "been dangerously out of touch on Iran for years, and has never proposed a viable alternative that could do a tenth of what the JCPOA achieved," wrote Ryan Costello, NIAC’s policy director, using an acronym for the deal.

Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018, reinstituting sanctions suspended during the deal and adding many more. In retaliation, Iran stopped complying with components of the deal and stepped up its enrichment of nuclear fissile material. It is now close to weaponization levels.

Menendez was among a handful of Democrats who opposed the 2015 deal, but who also opposed Trump’s 2018 withdrawal, saying it would make matters worse.

Posted by:trailing wife

#4 More likely a public quibble to signal to Kalorama that he needs some love. Since his travel days with his dentist ended, he has had a sweet tooth for secret friends I suspect. It is after all, New Jersey politics.

Posted by: NoMoreBS 2022-02-03 12:44

#3 A liberal Democrat from New Jersey is bailing? I guess Biden really is in trouble.

Posted by: Tom 2022-02-03 11:23

#2 Critics of the speech included NIAC Action, a group representing Iranian Americans who seek to deescalate tensions between Iran and the United States.... Ryan Costello, NIAC’s policy director

A Zoroastrian Hibernian? Or yet another Woke virtue-signing lefty Harp?

Posted by: Merrick Ferret 2022-02-03 08:30

#1 At the rate the dems are going with losing that "absolute lockstep" from their members, eliminating the filibuster won't be enough. They will have to figure out how to twist the pretzel so that a "bare plurality" is enough to pass their garbage.

Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-02-03 07:35

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