US Senate Republicans’ attempt to prevent President Barack Obama from lifting the Iran sanctions is politically motivated and spearheaded by the Israeli lobby in the United States, says a political analyst in Texas.
New legislation, introduced by Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), is aiming to force Obama to provide a wide-ranging report on a possible military dimension of Iran’s nuclear program before sanctions are lifted at the beginning of the new year, The Hill reported.
“There is a connection between these Republican senators and the Israeli lobby and there is a connection between the Republican Party generally and the Israeli lobby because the pro-Zionist neoconservative part of the American right has completely hijacked the Republican Party and has owned it for a considerable number of years,” Mark Dankof, a former Senate candidate, said on Thursday.
He said that it is necessary to “understand how political this is in terms of the connection between campaign cash and the Israeli lobby.”
Based on the legislation, the Obama administration needs to certify to the US Congress that there is no military-related activity in Iran’s nuclear program.
The legislation has, so far, been backed by 10 GOP senators, including 2016 presidential candidate Marco Rubio, as the White House is preparing for removal of the sanctions as part of the July nuclear agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Dankof said, “We have these Republican senators who are going along with something that clearly is being typed up in Benjamin Netanyahu’s office virtually, including statements that are absolutely beyond the pale in terms of insanity and doing so in exchange for all of this campaign cash.”
“Marco Rubio is the hand-picked boy of Sheldon Adelson, the leading Jewish Zionist financier in the Republican Party who wants Rubio to be the next president of the United States, and Senator Ayotte, Republican from New Hampshire, is backed by seven different single-issue Israeli-orientated political action committees including the Republican Jewish Coalition,” he noted.
Earlier this month, Sen. Ayotte spearheaded a letter to President Obama, also signed by 34 other Republicans, calling the removal of sanctions a “mistake” in the wake of recent missile tests in Iran.
Tehran has insisted that missile tests are not part of the agreement with the P5+1 group of countries.
“There is a statement made to the effect that the Islamic Republic of Iran is developing an intercontinental ballistic missile… [which] has only one sole purpose, to quote the language in this legislation, and that is to ‘initiate an attack upon the continental United States,’” Dankof said.
“This is absolute insanity. This is incredible that anybody in the United States Senate would sign off on something like this,” he added.