Opposition from US Congressional hawks to any nuclear deal with Iran gets more shrill by the moment, with open letters signed by scores of lawmakers a weekly affair nowadays and myriad bills in committee aimed at sabotaging the talks.
Both the US and Iran had a strongly anti-diplomacy set of hardliners, who were more comfortable continuing decades of acrimony, and saw the other side as not to be trusted in the talks. Iran’s hardliners remain, but you don’t hear from them so much as America’s.
Some of the Iranian MPs are warning that they’re not thrilled with the deal, but there is no real campaign among them to try to block the deal, let alone attempt to sour the negotiations with threats to the other side, as with a letter from Senate hawks earlier this month to Iran.
This may reflect the difficulty for Iranian politicians to make opposing a deal that could end economic sanctions against them a viable position to take, while US officials don’t see nearly the potential economic benefit from a deal.
It also likely reflects the lack of international pressure on the Iranian MPs, as the US Congress is being inundated by Israeli officials lobbying to get the deal killed at all costs.
Interesting comparison of US and Iranian "hardliners" opposing a nuclear deal between the US and Iran. But the comparison fails when the author equates potential (but nonexistent) "international pressure" on Iranian legislative members with actual "inundate[ive]" lobbying by Israel on US legislative members. And especially so in light of the obvious fact that for the past many years, Israeli lobbyists have been able to control the votes of overwhelming majorities of both the Senate and House on essentially any issue upon which Israeli lobbyists choose to focus their efforts. I wonder how long it will take for the American people to wake up to this fact and/or cease to swallow the Israeli propaganda that any opposition to whatever position the Israeli government happens to take is "anti-Semitism"? As a loyal US citizen, taxpayer and war veteran, I demand that my President — and members of Congress — cease their subservience to the dictates of any foreign power (including, but not limited to Israel) and start placing the interests of our nation ahead of the interests of other nations. Given the outrageous interference that Israel, its Prime Minister and its Ambassador to the US is currently conducting with reference to the Article II constitutional foreign-policy decisions that our President is in the process of taking with respect to the multilateral nuclear negotiations with Iran, if I were President I would declare the Israeli Ambassador "persona non grata", expel him from our nation, and inform the government of Israel that no new Israeli Ambassador will be accepted unless and until Israel promises in writing henceforth to refrain from interfering with our President's conduct of US foreign affairs — including, but not limited to, lobbying members of Congress regarding the President's current international negotiations or any other issue involving the internal political affairs of our nation. What Israel and its Ambassador are currently doing in Washington is a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions provisions prohibiting any foreign Ambassador from interfering with the internal political affairs of a host nation. There is no "Israel" exception to that universally applicable prohibition, as surely our President and our State Department must know. The time has long passed for our Government to declare its independence from its de facto ruler in Tel Aviv.
"the Geneva Conventions provisions prohibiting any foreign Ambassador from interfering with the internal political affairs of a host nation."
As I've told you elsewhere, there are no such provisions, either in the Geneva Conventions (which have nothing whatsoever to do with the topic of international diplomacy) or the Vienna Conventions (which cover diplomacy).