President Barack Obama "turned the tables" on Republicans in getting them to agree to the "awful" Iran nuclear deal, says Dr. Andrew Bostom, a Middle East expert and professor of medicine at Brown University.
"It's very disheartening to see that Republicans, conservatives, are pretending somehow that this is a victory for them," Bostom said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
"This is so awful."
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Republican members of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee cheered the unanimous approval of legislation this week giving Congress the right to reject any nuclear agreement with Iran — an approval made with Democratic help.
Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, said President Barack Obama walked back his veto threat after realizing that the bill's sponsors had enough votes to override it.
Some saw it as a sign that Congress would not back down on its insistence that lawmakers must have a say if any final deal with Tehran involves the eventual lifting of crippling economic sanctions that Congress levied in 1995.
The bill is now likely to clear both houses in the Republican-controlled Congress. Obama said he would sign it.
But Bostom — a columnist at PJ Media and author of
"Iran’s Final Solution for Israel: The Legacy of Jihad and Shi'ite Islamic Jew-Hatred in Iran," published by Bravura Books — said there is nothing to celebrate.
"To see [Tennessee Sen. Bob] Corker on with [Fox News' Bill] O'Reilly the other night as if this was a great triumph and as if Obama had been humiliated is just ridiculous," Bostom said.
"Obama has turned the tables on this Republican-dominated Senate so that they have to accept the basic agreement, then they are privileged to be able to review it after the fact and if they find some objections, they can attempt to do something to the sanctions regimen or reinstate it — if 34 Democrats don't vote against it.
"I mean, so he's totally turned the tables on them, and what is the leverage? In the end, the leverage over these senators, including the Republicans, is that none of them seem to have the moral clarity and bravery of [Arkansas Sen.] Tom Cotton, who is standing up for the Constitution and saying 'no' ..."
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