RUTHFULLY YOURS

A week from Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address a joint ‎session of Congress. He will find some empty seats as a few dozen Democrats, ‎almost all them either members of the Congressional Black Caucus or the ‎progressive caucus (the most left-wing members of the U.S. House of Representatives), plus a very ‎small number of senators, take the day off. These elected officials will boycott the ‎presentation to express their displeasure with the fact that Netanyahu’s invitation by ‎House Speaker John Boehner was “disrespectful to the president” and violated ‎established protocol. The disrespectful charge came naturally to the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who have formed a blocking and tackling operation to protect the first elected ‎black president from the time of his inauguration. The protocol issue relates to ‎the timing that the White House was informed, when the invitation was extended, and the ‎timing of a speech by a foreign leader so close to the date of their country’s ‎national election (though the initial date was one three weeks earlier and less in ‎proximity with the Israeli election date, and more in line with other visits by foreign ‎leaders before their nation’s election dates). ‎

The administration’s pique over the invitation has carried over to Vice President Joe ‎Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, both of whom have found some foreign country to visit ‎that day. Of course, the president and the secretary of state will not meet with ‎Netanyahu during his visit, nor will any top ranking official attend the ‎annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference where Netanyahu will also speak. In conclusion, at this point the ‎administration will meet with Iranian officials at any time, and in any ‎place the Iranians demand, but with Israeli leaders, not at all. ‎

Of course there would be no one charging disrespect or protocol violation were ‎Netanyahu coming to Congress to endorse the White House’s efforts to ‎quickly wrap up a deal with Iran, including whatever terms the Iranians demand ‎and/or accept, it seems. The administration is angry with Netanyahu for one reason only — he ‎is not on board with their effort, and he represents a major threat to a deal being ‎accepted by Congress and the American people as the great achievement the ‎administration believes it to be. ‎

The controversy over Netanyahu’s invitation is likely to generate a far larger audience for his speech than he would have gotten without it. It is also true that the ‎Israeli prime minister will not only be speaking to members Congress but to the ‎larger audience of Americans who will be tuning in. In essence, Netanyahu’s speech ‎is part of the ongoing battle for public opinion that is already well underway ‎between Obama and Netanyahu over the wisdom of the Iran deal. Once a deal is ‎concluded, and that seems a near certainty at this point, the administration will ‎mount its usual offensive — through compliant journalists, respected Democratic ‎Party members of Congress (some of them Jewish of course), and a wide array of ‎administration and State Department officials volunteering to do Sunday talk-show ‎duty to plug the great achievement. Expect MSNBC, with whichever anchors still ‎have jobs, to be promoting the deal hour after hour. The New York Times may ‎have editorials and opinion pieces already lined up. Polling organizations friendly ‎to the White House will announce poll results immediately after the president gives ‎what will almost certainly be a prime time address to applaud his great ‎achievement, showing strong numbers backing the negotiated settlement with the ‎mullahs.‎

Netanyahu’s speech is a pre-emptive move before a deal is reached to enlighten ‎those who are willing to hear him out, that Iran has not changed, that its nuclear ‎program represents an existential threat to Israel and others in the region, and ‎with its long-range missile delivery system, to Europeans as well. And more to the ‎point, Netanyahu will argue that the deal currently on the table will at most slightly delay the time it takes for Iran to “break out” from the deal it has signed and join the ‎nuclear weapons club, prompting more nations to decide they too must have a ‎nuclear weapon. ‎

The administration’s public relations campaign will be designed to blunt any effort ‎in Congress to either pass a new sanctions bill — aimed at ramping up sanctions if ‎Iran violates the terms of the deal — or more importantly, to demand that the deal be ‎considered a treaty and brought to the Senate for approval. Treaties require the approval of a two thirds majority, and with 54 Republican senators out of 100, achieving such a majority would be a steep uphill ‎climb for the White House, given the near complete breakdown of trust between ‎Obama and the Congress, much of it the result of presidential executive actions ‎viewed by Congress as superseding presidential authority. ‎

The White House has already announced that the president will not consider the agreement, ‎if it is reached, to be a treaty, and therefore it will not require Senate approval. ‎However, it is likely that many Americans will expect the Congress to have some ‎review role in the new policy commitments the administration will have made. Senator ‎Bob Corker of Tennessee has offered one approach to get Congress involved, linked to Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act: ‎

‎”Section 123 requires that any ‘significant’ U.S. nuclear cooperation with ‎other countries meet certain criteria and be submitted to Congress, and ‎lays out procedures for Congress to consider the agreement. ‎Implementation is delayed for 90 days while Congress examines and can ‎vote on the agreement. If the president certifies that the agreement meets ‎all criteria, and an explicit joint resolution of disapproval fails to pass, ‎then the agreement goes into effect at the end of the waiting period. ‎Corker’s bill would operate similarly (although it would likely not ‎include specific criteria and a shorter time frame), delaying ‎implementation of any agreement with Iran until Congress has the ‎opportunity to weigh in. After the study period, only if Congress ‎affirmatively passed a resolution of disapproval (likely over the ‎president’s veto) would an agreement be killed.”‎

Senate approval of a treaty ‎requires a two-thirds vote (67 of 100 senators), meaning that 34 can ‎block it. The Corker bill would require the opponents to get to 67, a ‎much higher hurdle. Of course, the Senate could vote on the deal as a ‎treaty, creating a constitutional challenge to the White House that the ‎Supreme Court might eventually hear. But odds would probably favor ‎the White House in that kind of showdown, meaning the Corker ‎approach may be the more likely path taken. ‎

The administration and its critics are also at odd over the need for a deal with Iran and over who would benefit from one. Michael Ledeen ‎argues that the White House is far more anxious than the Iranians to reach an ‎agreement, since the Iranian leaders have lived off “Death to America” ‎sloganeering for 35 years, and would be anything but eager to sign an ‎agreement with the Great Satan. While the talks have been underway between the P5+1 and Iran, the ‎Iranians have increased their influence in Syria, and Iraq (with approval of the ‎Obama administration in each case), and now in Yemen as well, where the ‎Americans embarrassingly retreated after the government collapsed to ‎Iranian-supported rebels. Obama’s White House seems unable to offer even ‎mild public criticism of the Iranians or their behavior, though Iran’s supreme ‎leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his clique of mullahs, never miss an ‎opportunity to wage their campaign of great hatred against the United States. ‎

Given the seeming desperation of the Obama team to showcase the one great ‎foreign policy success of their years in office (at least in their own eyes) — a nuclear ‎deal with Iran that keeps it from joining the nuclear club while Obama is still in ‎office — Iran can continue to play for time, extend the negotiations, and continue to ‎move unimpeded to extend its sphere of influence in the region. As Michael ‎Doran wrote, the Obama doctrine has always been to diminish America’s ‎footprint and role in the region, and allow Iran to become the successor regional ‎power, as long as it does not go nuclear and embarrass Obama on his watch. ‎

Obama has had his Sunni favorites in the region as well, but he has lost interest in ‎Egypt since the Muslim Brotherhood was removed from power, and Turkey has ‎been too unpredictable of late. Siding with the region’s Shiite power, particularly in ‎its fight with ISIS in Syria and Iraq, has turned historic Sunni allies, such as ‎Saudi Arabia, against the U.S. The president may have discovered, assuming there is an ounce of ‎realism allowed into the foreign policy discussions among White House ‎sycophants, that he has far less control over achieving his foreign policy goals than he does over ‎his domestic plans. So Obama is giving his all in the one place where he is still in the game — ‎the Iranian nuclear deal. The poor Israeli prime minister knew Israel did not have a friend in ‎the White House, unlike the American Jews who have followed Obama loyally as though ‎he was the pied piper. But ‎even Netanyahu may not have expected the ferocity and multifaceted nature of the ‎undermining of Israel and its prime minister currently underway.‎