Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Oh) told the Times that Dermer used sports analogies to convince Republicans to kill the deal. And Steve King (R-Iowa) cited Dermer as saying “Congress is the last stop to avoid this, and if this Congress doesn’t shut down the president’s deal, then it paves the way for not just a nuclear Iran but for a very highly powered nuclear Iran.”
“It changes the destiny of the world,” King said.
Meanwhile, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi and Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois are working hard to prevent a veto override. “I know there’s tens of millions of dollars lined up against the agreement,” Pelosi said, “but I think members are getting a firm foundation as to what is in there and what the options are.”
This battle will obviously continue through the August recess and come to a loud eruption after Labor Day. As is common in such battle scenes, nothing becomes clear until the dust settles. In the absence of clarity, some have been attempting to muse outside the noise box.
Israeli left wing pundit Uri Avnery joked last weekend that if Iran was looking to unfreeze its money, much of which has been kept in Western vaults sine 1979, this is precisely what they should have done.
“What if the wily Persians did not even dream of building an atomic bomb, but used the threat to further their real aims?” Avnery wondered, asking: “What if Binyamin Netanyahu was duped to become unwittingly the main collaborator of Iranian ambitions?”
Stranger things have turned up to be true…
