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Americans share Obama’s embarrassment over GOP letter to Iran: Scholar

A letter warning Iran against a nuclear deal with the US reveals “vast ignorance” on the part of the 47 GOP senators who signed it, an American scholar says.

Many Americans share the “embarrassment” of US President Barack Obama for the group of Republican senators who sent a letter to Iran’s leaders warning against a nuclear deal with the United States, an American scholar says.

“The sense of embarrassment that President Obama has expressed toward the 47 Republicans who signed this open letter to the government of Iran is shared by many Americans,” said James Henry Fetzer, who is an editor at Veterans Today and a retired professor in Madison, Wisconsin.

“It is embarrassing on many accounts, including that it reveals vast ignorance on the part of the senators about the situation regarding these negotiations,” Fetzer told Press TV on Saturday.

Firstly, the analyst noted that the nuclear talks are between Iran and the P5+1 countries – the US, Britain, France, China, Russia, and Germany – and are not a unilateral negotiation between Washington and Tehran.

Secondly, all 16 US intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program, Fetzer said, adding that the assertion to the contrary is a “figment of imagination.”

The analyst said the signatories of the Iran letter are proponent of sanctions imposed on Iran, which are considered “collective punishment” and “a war crime” based on Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions prohibits collective penalties inflicted on individuals or an entire group of individuals for acts they have not committed.

These lawmakers “have made fools of themselves,” he said. “It’s shocking that this letter should have been signed by 47 senators.”

An open letter signed last week by 47 Republican senators warned Iran that the next US president could revoke any nuclear deal reached with Iran. The move was a highly unusual intervention in US foreign policy.

The letter followed a speech to Congress earlier this month by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who warned US lawmakers that the White House was negotiating “a very bad deal” with Tehran.

Iran and the P5+1 countries are holding negotiations to work out a final deal aimed at ending the longstanding standoff over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday blasted the congressional letter to Iran as “incorrect”, saying Congress cannot change a possible nuclear deal with Iran.

Kerry, speaking in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, stressed that Obama has the power to implement any nuclear agreement, despite intense opposition from Republican lawmakers in Congress.

Last week, the top US diplomat said the letter was “quite stunning” and left him in "utter disbelief," as it undermines US foreign policy and ignores more than 200 years of history.

AHT/HRJ


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