The Senate Republicans isn’t the only group unhappy about Iranian Nuclear Negotiations. Arash Karami reports for AL Monitor on shady Iranian Parliament maneuverings:
A bill demanding that Iran suspend nuclear talks with the United States until US officials cease making military threats against Iran was presented to the Iranian parliament May 12. The bill has faced a backlash, however, with some members of parliament claiming that they were misled about the nature and content of the bill.
Javad Karimi-Ghodousi, a member of parliament from Mashhad and member of the hard-line Endurance Front, presented the bill to parliament’s board of directors. The bill, which received 80 signatures, was presented as a “triple-emergency bill,” requiring a representative from the Guardian Council to be present to give a response within 24 hours. Triple-emergency bills are typically presented when the country is actively under military attack. Mehdi Koochakzadeh, Hamid Rasaei, Esmail Kowsari and Morteza Agha-Tehrani, who signed the bill, have been some of the most vocal critics in parliament against the nuclear talks and the Iranian negotiation team. …
Mehdi Mousavi-Nejad, whose name appears on the bill also, said to Icana, “We never signed a triple-emergency bill. The bill that was put in front of me, and which I signed, was a double-emergency bill.” A double-emergency bill requires that the bill be presented to the parliament floor within 24 hours and bypasses normal committee hearings. Mousavi-Nejad said that he told the creators of the bill that he would only sign a double-emergency bill, and since they changed it his signature must be voided.
In another article, also by Karami, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is rather irate about the United States:
During his speech on May 6, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded to comments by US officials about the possibility of a military confrontation should the nuclear negotiations between Iran and members of the UN Security Council fail. The comments were some of the harshest yet by the supreme leader, who has the final say on the nuclear program.
“I’ve repeatedly spoken about the nuclear talks. What we’ve needed to say we’ve said, but everyone should pay attention — our Foreign Ministry officials, various officials, the elite of society: If a nation cannot defend its identity and greatness against foreigners, certainly it will be struck. There is no return; it has to know the value of its character,” Khamenei said.
He continued, “The enemy makes threats. In these last few days, two American officials made threats. We won’t even mention those who don’t have important posts; these are [top] officials.”
If negotiations lose his favor, then we could find ourselves back at square one. And while the neocons may think war is both inevitable and good, the rest of us still remember the nightmare of Iraq, both past and present tense, and connect it to their foolishness.
