Charles Krauthammer Admits What Senators Pushing Iran Sanctions Won't

They Want War

The Huffington Post | By Ryan Grim & Mollie Reilly
Posted: 01/20/2014 8:22 pm EST | Updated: 01/20/2014 9:49 pm EST

Backers of a controversial Senate bill to tighten sanctions on Iran in the midst of nuclear negotiations have consistently argued that their motivation is to strengthen the hand of the administration in the talks, hoping to extract greater concessions from Iran. But the administration and other opponents of the sanctions bill say that the aggressive sanctions, if passed into law, would be more likely to upset the balance of the talks, collapsing them and leading inevitably to war.

The White House has gone so far as to suggest that "[i]f certain members of Congress want the United States to take military action, they should be up front with the American public and say so," rather than hiding behind the claim that they are actually trying to help the administration.

But why would backers of the strong sanctions bill, which is being pushed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, want the negotiations to fail?

That question was answered honestly on Monday by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer. The preliminary deal struck with Iran is a "catastrophe," he argued, because it is not tough enough on Iran. Worse still, he said, the existence of the negotiations makes it diplomatically and perhaps militarily impossible for Israel to carry out an attack on Iran while talks are under way.

"They're in a very difficult position," Krauthammer said of the Israelis during an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt. "This deal is designed as much by John Kerry and Barack Obama to prevent Israel from defending itself by attacking these facilities as it was supposedly to prevent Iran from going nuclear."

(More here.)