Jonah Goldberg‘s latest column at National Review Online looks beyond the liberal outcry surrounding U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton’s letter about American policy toward Iran.
Right now, via its brutal proxies, Iran is manipulating events on the ground in four Arab capitals — Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus, and Sanaa. Whatever success there has been against the Islamic State in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit has been thanks to Iranian advisors operating in Iraq and the Shiite Muslim militias they control. On Sunday’s Meet the Press, retired admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he fears Iran more than Islamic State.
So, obviously, the greatest villain in the world today is . . . Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.). He led the effort to get 46 other senators to sign a letter to the Iranian government explaining that any deal with Iran would require congressional approval. …
… Now, I should say that I think the senators made a mistake. They should have written an open letter to President Obama. The Iranians would still have gotten the message, but the White House and the punditocracy would have found it more difficult to rationalize their insane hissy fit. And contrary to countless outlets reporting that the Republicans “sent” this letter to the ayatollahs, they didn’t send it anywhere. It was posted on Cotton’s website.
The more important point here is that no one disagrees with the content of the letter because it is accurate. The White House had to admit that Cotton was right; the deal as it stands would be a “non-binding” agreement. And, therefore, as the letter explains, “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen.” …
… This premature admission is politically inconvenient for the Obama administration because it wants to get the United Nations to approve the deal, making it a fait accompli. It hoped to get to that point without anyone noticing.
