— Reprinted with Permission of The New American magazine —
Apart from the many problematic details of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, there is the overriding problem of the entire P5+1 process that produced the agreement and, even more importantly, the U.S. Senate’s abdication of its constitutional “advice and consent” obligation.
On July 14, international diplomats meeting in Vienna, Austria, announced they had reached an historic agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to lift economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for the Tehran regime’s acceptance of international inspections of its nuclear energy program.
In his weekly radio address from the White House on July 18, President Obama declared that “this deal will make America and the world safer and more secure.” He described the JCPOA as “a deal that will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
“As Commander-in-Chief,” said Obama, “I make no apology for keeping this country safe and secure through the hard work of diplomacy over the easy rush to war.”
But has the new agreement been designed to keep America “safe and secure,” as President Obama claims? Or was it crafted to further empower the United Nations, to further our convergence with other nations and our absorption into a “new world order” under the UN and other global institutions?
Those questions will only seem “out there” to those who are clueless regarding the negotiators and the negotiation process that produced the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The JCPOA was negotiated by representatives of Iran and the global powers known as the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States — plus Germany). Federica Mogherini, the high representative of the European Union to the P5+1, was, and is, also a key participant (which actually makes it P5+1+1). Mogherini, a hardcore “Red diaper baby,” was a loyal apparatchik in the Italian Communist Party. She then followed along as the party changed its name to the Democrats of the Left — while keeping its same Marxist-Leninist agenda. Mogherini, who is now the European Union’s foreign policy chief, has been a top factotum for the crypto-communist Democrats of the Left, serving, among other roles, as their representative to the Socialist International and the Party of European Socialists. She was given the honor of announcing the breakthrough deal in Vienna on July 14, which (just by “coincidence,” says the New York Times) happens to be a high holy day for communists the world over. “July 14 will go down as a seminal day in the annual calendar of Iran,” the Times reported. “By coincidence, it is also Bastille Day, the French national day commemorating the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789.”
Mogherini was assisted in the P5+1 effort by fellow communists Sergey Lavrov (Russia’s foreign minister), Wang Yi (China’s foreign minister), and globalists from the U.K., France, Germany, and the United States, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, a longtime activist member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the shadow organization that has been the de facto government of the United States for most of the past century.
Secretary Kerry underscored his CFR credentials when he joined CFR President Richard Haass and CFR members for “A Conversation With John F. Kerry” (see video and transcript here).
After being introduced by Haass, Kerry noted that he’s been a CFR member virtually all of his adult life. He said:
Well, Richard, thank you. Let me begin by thanking all of you very much for being here early in the morning. As Richard said, in the summertime I know it is not the regular course of business. And I’m proud to have been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since, I think, about 1971 or something, when I first was opposed to the war and was invited to join when they were reaching out to then genuinely younger members.
Kerry’s admission was not quite as revealing as that of his predecessor, Hillary Clinton, who memorably referred to the CFR as the “mother ship” of the State Department and gushed that she was so happy the New York-based organization had opened its satellite office in Washington, D.C. so she wouldn’t have to go so far to be told what to do!
While Kerry took center stage at high profile P5+1 meetings, the day-to-day negotiations were led by U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (and CFR member) Wendy Sherman. Team Obama’s principal lineup for selling the Iran deal to Congress has consisted of Secretary of State John Kerry (CFR), Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz (CFR), Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew (CFR), and White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice (CFR).
On July 20, a group of 60 former Cabinet Secretaries, national security advisors, military leaders, ambassadors, and other senior national security leaders — virtually all of whom are CFR members — issued a statement and letter applauding the JCPOA with Iran. The group includes Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; Secretary of Defense William Perry; Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill; National Security Advisors Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft; Under Secretaries of State Nicholas Burns and Thomas R. Pickering; U.S. Ambassadors Ryan Crocker and Stuart Eizenstat; U.S. Senators Tom Daschle, Carl Levin, George Mitchell, Nancy Landon Kassebaum; Admiral Eric Olson; Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy; and Assistant Secretary for Nonproliferation Robert Einhorn.
Zbigniew Brzezinski’s presence among these “experts” is particularly noteworthy, as he played a central role in the Carter administration’s betrayal and overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlavi, America’s most steadfast ally in the region, who was also a moderating influence on Islam. In his place Carter, Brzezinski, and company installed the Shia-Leninist regime of Ayatollah Khomeini, which quickly became the world’s principal state sponsor of terror — and conveniently supplied the CFR one-worlders with a perpetual “crisis” to be exploited for continuous moves toward world government.
Brzezinski (CFR), Jimmy Carter’s tutor and the architect of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, was assisted in creating the Iran fiasco by fellow CFR comrades in the administration, such as Harold Brown, Cyrus Vance, Richard Cooper, Richard Gardner, Andrew Young, Anthony Lake, Sandy Berger, Robert Gates, George Ball, Milton Katz — not to mention the CFR constabulary among the establishment media choir that provided indispensable support. Carter himself later joined the CFR, formalizing a relationship that he had earlier chosen to keep hidden for political purposes.
UN, CFR Declare Iran Deal “International Law”
The timing of the release of the letter of support by the 60 experts, July 20, was not an accident; that was the very day on which the UN Security Council voted to endorse the JCPOA, despite appeals by members of the U.S. Congress for the UN to wait until Congress had had an opportunity to review the agreement. Immediately, the CFR establishment declared that, as a result of the UN vote, the Iran deal was now “international law,” and there is nothing that Congress or the American people can do but accept it.
In a story entitled “Iran deal set to become international law,” CBS News reported:
CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk says the resolution will make the Iran nuclear deal international law, but will delay its official implementation for 90 days, to allow for the U.S. Congress’ consideration.
Falk explained that while Congress cannot block the implementation of the deal, if the legislative body votes against it and has enough votes to override a promised veto from President Obama, it is not clear what would happen next.
Not surprisingly, the above-mentioned “CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk” is a CFR member, but her globalist credentials are not divulged in the story, of course.
“A U.S. official told CBS News that American law doesn’t ‘trump’ U.N. resolutions,” the story continues, “but if Congress were to vote against the measure — and garner enough votes to override a presidential veto — lawmakers could stop U.S. sanctions being lifted, which could prompt Iran to declare the U.S. as non-compliant with the terms of the deal and to back out.”
According to CBS: “If U.S. lawmakers were to decide after Monday’s vote that they wanted changes to the terms of the agreement, it would essentially be too late, because it would require the Security Council to propose a new resolution — and there would likely be little appetite for such deliberations among the other negotiating partners.”
The CBS report noted that Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R- Tenn.), on July 16, wrote a letter to President Obama saying, “We urge you to postpone the vote at the United Nations until after Congress considers this agreement.”
“But the chief U.S. negotiator in the Iran talks, Wendy Sherman, rejected that idea,” CBS reported, continuing that Sherman (CFR) told reporters: “It would have been a little difficult when all of the (countries negotiating with Iran) wanted to go to the United Nations to get an endorsement of this, since it is a product of the United Nations process, for us to say, ‘Well, excuse me, the world, you should wait for the United States Congress.'”
“Sherman said the council resolution allows the ‘time and space’ for a congressional review before the measure actually takes effect,” CBS reported.
Yes, according to CFR “experts” in the government and the media, the U.S. Congress shall be allowed to “review” the Iran deal (JCPOA), but not allowed to take any substantive action other than to offer a perfunctory rubber-stamp approval.
But the esteemed opinions of Obama administration functionaries and media analysts notwithstanding, the U.S. Constitution — tattered, battered, and ignored though it be — still remains the law of the land governing official conduct. And Article II, Section 2 of our Constitution states that the president of the United States “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”
The JCPOA is a treaty, regardless of the administration’s claim it is an executive agreement that does not require a two-thirds approval vote in the Senate. It deals with matters that have always been considered treaty matters. As President Obama himself stated, it deals with the safety and security of the United States.
Unfortunately, whether due to incompetence or skullduggery, Senator Corker played into the calculating hands of the CFR and the Obama administration by offering (and passing) the Corker-Menendez bill S. 615 back in April. The Corker-Menendez bill, in effect, traded (without the constitutional authority to do so) the two-thirds supermajority count President Obama would need to get to have the JCPOA approved as a treaty for simple majority votes in the House and Senate. This has turned the Treaty Clause on its end; now, under Corker-Memendez, it is the opponents of the JCPOA who must come up with a two-thirds supermajority to override a presidential veto, if Congress votes to reject the deal and President Obama vetoes their rejection.
As with this country’s many undeclared wars in recent years and the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), under the Iran deal the Republican leaders in Congress are assisting the Obama administration (as they previously did the Bush and Clinton administrations) in advancing the CFR plan for centralization of power, destruction of constitutional checks and balances, and erosion of national sovereignty.
