House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) lost his mind after President Obama’s announcement of a landmark deal with Iran, saying “We will do everything we can to stop” a bad deal that paves the way to a nuclear Iran.
Watch here:
From Speaker Boehner’s written statement it’s clear that he has decided — in spite of the President assuring him otherwise — that the deal does not require verification:
“At the outset of these talks, the Obama administration said it would secure an agreement that affirmed Iran does not have a right to enrich and permanently dismantles the infrastructure of its nuclear programs. It said that sanctions would not be lifted until Iran met concrete, verifiable standards. And if these terms were not met, the president promised he would walk away.”
Speaker Boehner announced that in spite of world leaders saying the deal will make the world safer, he, who hasn’t seen it, knows that it will likely “fuel a nuclear arms race around the world”:
“The American people and our allies were counting on President Obama to keep his word. Instead, the president has abandoned his own goals. His ‘deal’ will hand Iran billions in sanctions relief while giving it time and space to reach a break-out threshold to produce a nuclear bomb – all without cheating. Instead of making the world less dangerous, this ‘deal’ will only embolden Iran – the world’s largest sponsor of terror – by helping stabilize and legitimize its regime as it spreads even more violence and instability in the region. Instead of stopping the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, this deal is likely to fuel a nuclear arms race around the world.
Here’s the part where Speaker Boehner pretended that he has a say in the deal:
“The House of Representatives will review every detail of this agreement very closely, but I won’t support any agreement that jeopardizes the safety of the American people and all who value freedom and security. This isn’t about Republicans versus Democrats. It’s about right and wrong. And we will fight a bad deal that is wrong for our national security and wrong for our country.”
The Iran deal was based on two years of negotiations, which suggests that diplomacy has a place in foreign policy after all, since it achieved what years of hostility could not. This, of course, seems to be the real problem. Republicans don’t believe in diplomacy.
Sen. Barbara Boxer’s statement points out the real problem here, “If this agreement is what the Administration says it is, it is a major, historic diplomatic breakthrough.” Yes. We can’t have diplomatic breakthroughs because that would ruin the credibility of the war hawks.
The other point that Boxer’s statement makes is that no one has seen the deal yet. How can Boehner know it sucks when he hasn’t seen it yet? In his televised statement, Boehner prefaced his disagreement of the deal with “… in my view, from I know thus far, is unacceptable…”
From what he knows so far. Which is…?
… But that was enough to disagree totally and to say that “this deal is likely to fuel a nuclear arms race around the world.”
No matter that not only President Obama but other world leaders say that the deal is a good one, with David Cameron saying it “… secures our fundamental aim, to keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon” and it will “make our world a safer place.” Plus, Obama explained this morning that the deal wasn’t built on trust but on “verification”.
Republicans have yet to offer up any specifics on their alternative deal. But they are very good at trolling, shouting and hysterically warning that Obama is ruining the world. Not just the U.S. anymore, but the entire world. They said affordable healthcare was going to kill babies and grandparents and ruin America. It turned out to be the opposite.
Not once have their hysterical predictions about President Obama been proven right in seven years, but hey. There’s still time.
Once again Republicans screamed and threw tantrums from the sidelines, but never offered a real solution with specifics. Boehner knows that President Obama has vowed to veto any Republican attempts to block the Iran deal. So basically, the Speaker is in what is a very familiar position for him of posturing and blustering for the cameras — even as he knows he won’t be doing anything about anything.
This is John Boehner’s basic approach to being Speaker — he does nothing, and then blames Obama when the chaos becomes too enormous for the press to ignore. This time, the entire world is going to collapse and it will be Obama’s fault for using diplomacy where war is the obvious answer. In the Republican view, war is better than diplomacy, even if war doesn’t work and actually makes the problem worse (see Iraq).
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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