Unsanctioned Fight: How Bob Menendez Defied Obama On The Biggest Diplomatic Deal Of His Presidency
Bob Menendez was furious.
In a blistering monologue, the Democratic senator from New Jersey let loose on two Obama administration officials, telling them exactly what he thought about their resistance to his plan for new sanctions on Iran. He had modified his proposal to make it a bit softer, he said at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in December 2011, only for the administration to “vitiate” his amendment.
The result, he said with typical bite, “really undermines, certainly as it relates to this member, your relationship with me for the future.”
Two years later, Menendez is now the chairman of the committee, and he is once again clashing with the administration on Iran, this time as a vocal skeptic on one of President Barack Obama’s most significant foreign policy breakthroughs—an interim deal to slow Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Only now Menendez has a more prominent platform for his aggressive approach, even as the White House again tries to dissuade him.
Working with 25 lawmakers from both parties, Menendez on Thursday rolled out a new round of provisional sanctions on Iran (set to take effect if talks fail), despite stern warnings from the White House and Secretary of State John Kerry—Menendez’s predecessor as the Foreign Relations chairman—that such steps could undermine negotiations aimed at reaching a long-term deal to stall Tehran’s march toward nuclear weaponry.
The White House immediately threatened a veto, and Obama took an oblique swipe at Menendez’s bill in his year-end news conference Friday. “I’m not surprised that there’s been some talk from some members of Congress about sanctions,” he said. “I think the politics of trying to look tough on Iran are often good when you’re running for office—or if you’re in office.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/12/bob-menendezs-unsanctioned-fight-with-the-white-house-101396.html#ixzz2o9WHoDxL
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