JINSA CEO Quoted in the Washington Post on Iran
Rand Paul vs. Israel, again
By Jennifer Rubin
Rand Paul vs. Israel, again
By Jennifer Rubin
The Wall Street Journal reports that at the annual Wall Street Journal CEO Council meeting, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) reaffirmed that he is the sole GOP potential 2016 contender to support White House national security adviser Susan Rice’s fear-mongering that new Iran sanctions would wreck the ongoing (critics say fruitless) negotiations with the P5+1, which was supposed to reach a final deal in six months. “Mr. Paul noted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he thought the extension was a good thing. . . . He said he thought the U.S. should do all it can to prevent Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon, and that instituting sanctions at this stage could hinder the progress so far.” Progress?! Many conservatives would hotly dispute that, citing the one-sided negotiations that are allowing Iran to move ever closer to a nuclear weapons capacity.
No, Netanyahu does not agree with Paul. In speech after speech, he has implored the P5+1 to increase sanctions on Iran and roundly criticized efforts to roll back sanctions for reversible changes in Iran’s illicit program. Netanyahu, like many domestic critics of the interim deal, sees the extension as the lesser of two evils. He nevertheless, unlike Paul, wants sanctions to be ramped up in order to pressure Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions.
Mark Dubowitz, sanctions guru at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is fed up with the scare-mongering over new sanctions. “Instead of playing into the Iranian trap of threatening that any form of pressure will blow up negotiations, the administration would be well advised to work constructively with Congress on such a bill instead of continuing to ignore lawmakers’ concerns,” he says. “The bill can use a phased approach to tightening the screws backed up by a credible threat of a tidal wave of sanctions if Iran continues its nuclear intransigence. So far the administration has failed to deliver; it’s time to respect the advice of Congress which played an instrumental role in designing the toughest sanctions over administration objections.”