The Constitution gives Congress all the authority it needs — and must use — to repair damage done by President Barack Obama to America's critical alliance with Israel, and to prevent the White House from cutting a bad nuclear deal with Iran, legal scholar Alan Dershowitz told
Newsmax TV on Thursday.
"Now there's a myth out there that the president [alone] conducts foreign policy, and that's nonsense," Newsmax contributor Dershowitz told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner, adding that "the framers of the Constitution divided the authority over foreign policy between the Congress and the president."
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Dershowitz described Tuesday's sweeping election victory for Republicans as a positive development for advocates of U.S.-Israeli solidarity — provided the party uses its majority power in both houses of Congress to "straighten out the skewed relationship between the United States and Israel."
Identifying the administration officials who called
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "chicken----" and a "coward" in The Atlantic magazine would be a good start, said Dershowitz.
"Congress can have hearings to determine who those two people were — senior White House officials who used those terrible words about Prime Minister Netanyahu, and who revealed classified state information telling the Iranians that American believes that Netanyahu was bluffing over Iran," he said.
"You know what that did to Israel's negotiating position and America's negotiating position by revealing that information? Even if it's true — which I don't think it is true," said Dershowitz.
Dershowitz said that Congress can and should compel testimony from administration officials and demand the identities of Netanyahu's ad-hominem critics.
He also said the president has a role to play, whether Congress prods him or not.
"He must get to the bottom of this," said Dershowitz. "Find out who the two people are who made those statements, expose them, fire them, and make it clear that that doesn't represent the administration's view on this."
Keeping Iran, one of Israel's most hostile adversaries, from acquiring nuclear weapons is also well within Congress' purview, he said.
Article 1 of the Constitution confers "enormous foreign policy powers" on the legislative branch, and lawmakers have "full Constitutional authority" to force the president to clear his Iran negotiations with Congress, and to maintain or ratchet up existing economic sanctions on Iran even if the president objects, said Dershowitz.
"A bad deal with Iran will only result in worse problems, two, three, five years down the line," said Dershowitz. "And President Obama will be remembered as the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century if his actions during his administration allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons — which the president himself admits would be a game changer.
"So Congress has to play an active role in preventing this administration from making a dreadful mistake in relation to Iran," he said.
"There are only two more years to the Obama administration," said Dershowitz. "His interests may be in preserving his legacy and making sure nothing bad happens in the next two years. Congress has an interest in making sure that the short-term interests of a particular president don't undercut the long-term interests of the United States of America."
He said those interests include "a strong alliance with Israel," which he described as America's "one reliable ally in the Middle East."