Democrats, Obama angry over Iran letter
White House is working to head off a Democratic revolt on the emerging deal
Democrats lashed out at Republicans, saying they undercut the president on foreign policy.
WASHINGTON — The open letter that 47 Senate Republicans sent to Iran’s leadership Monday warning about making a nuclear agreement with President Barack Obama is forcing Democrats to choose between confronting Tehran and rallying around Obama as he searches for a diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff.
Democrats say that as concerned as they are about an emerging deal with Iran, Republicans’ extraordinary moves to undermine Obama’s efforts to reach an agreement are weakening their resolve to cross party lines and challenge their own president.
“I think Republicans have made it harder for us to approach this in a careful and bipartisan way,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.
Kaine has been a leader in his party on pushing for congressional review of the administration’s policies on war and sanctions, and is a sponsor of a bill to review any removal of congressionally imposed sanctions on Iran.
He added: “I regret that this partisan and nutty behavior makes people focus on politics and not the substance.”
On Tuesday, Democrats took to the Senate floor to denounce the letter to Iran.
Noting that she had opposed the war in Iraq under President George W. Bush, Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, her voice shaking with rage, said, “I never would have sent a letter to Saddam Hussein.”
The White House, which is working to head off a Democratic revolt on the deal, is in the meantime seeking to capitalize on the deepening partisan rift.
In a lengthy and harshly worded statement released late Monday, Vice President Joe Biden, a Senate veteran of more than three decades and a former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he could recall no other instance in which senators had written to the leaders of another country, “much less a foreign adversary,” to say the president had no authority to strike a deal with them.
“This letter, in the guise of a constitutional lesson, ignores two centuries of precedent and threatens to undermine the ability of any future American president, whether Democrat or Republican, to negotiate with other nations on behalf of the United States,” Biden said. “Honorable people can disagree over policy. But this is no way to make America safer or stronger.”
Biden’s public outrage signaled that the White House planned to use its most trusted and experienced emissary to Capitol Hill to make the case to Senate Democrats that whatever they might think of the emerging nuclear deal, Republicans had crossed an inviolable line on foreign policy.
The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who has been steeped in the negotiations with Secretary of State John Kerry and other leaders, said the letter suggested that the United States could not be trusted.
“This kind of correspondence, which is an unprecedented and nondiplomatic action, in fact, tells us that the United States is not trustworthy,” Zarif was quoted by Iranian news agencies as saying.
Two bills — one to increase economic sanctions on Iran and another to force the administration to bring any deal with Iran before Congress for review — have been co-sponsored by several Democrats.
Before this week, both measures looked as though they could draw a veto-proof majority in the Senate, which would be a humiliating outcome for Obama.
The president has vowed to veto both bills.
Speaker John A. Boehner’s invitation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, the most outspoken opponent of an Iran deal, to address a joint meeting of Congress last week angered the White House and prompted many Democrats, even ardent supporters of Israel, to boycott the speech.
Shortly after the address, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, moved to speed consideration of the bill to review the Iran deal, which would have led to votes on it before the late-March negotiating deadline for an outline of the agreement.
Democratic sponsors of that bill reacted angrily and said that Republicans were politicizing diplomacy and that they would not vote on the measure until after the negotiating deadline.
Some Democrats warned that the Republican letter to Iran may in the end backfire.
“The whole brouhaha last week reduced from a 40 percent chance to a 4 percent chance that Democrats will vote in sufficient numbers to override a veto,” said Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., one of the most ardent supporters of Israel.