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United States

Why Menendez is such an awful Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair

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bobmenendez

Was Jesse Helms a better chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee than Bob Menendez?  USflag

Menendez, who took over the committee earlier this year when former senator John Kerry was appointed as US secretary of state, is making headlines this week for a bill that would largely derail a still delicate US-Iranian rapprochement.  He introduced a Senate bill yesterday that, if enacted, would mark a serious setback in the nuclear negotiations between the United States (and the other members of the ‘P5 + 1’ team that includes the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany) and Iran.  The bill would institute a new round of punitive economic sanctions on Iran on the heels of a six-month deal between negotiators and the administration of Iran’s new moderate president Hassan Rowhani that all parties hope could lead to a more permanent accord.  On Thursday, ten Democratic committee chairs sent a letter to Senate majority leader Harry Reid in opposition to Menendez’s bill, and the White House has warned Menendez that his legislative efforts aren’t helping negotiations.

Though Menendez’s bill, co-sponsored with Republican senator Mark Kirk of Illinois, is called the ‘Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act,’ there’s no firm evidence that Iran even wants to build a nuclear weapon, though plenty of US policymakers suspect that Iran has secret designs on building one.  Rowhani and his foreign minister Javad Zarif have disclaimed interest in nuclear weapons, and Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei has argued that nuclear weapons are a violation of Islamic law.

The bill would introduce new sanctions if Iran violates the terms of the current agreement or fails to come to a permanent agreement with the ‘P5 + 1’ team.  In essence, it would put an economic sanctions gun to Iran’s head — the bill demonstrates no respect for a process of negotiation between two sovereign states.  It seems more designed to score low-hanging political points for conservative Democrats than to engage seriously on finding a mutually acceptable path for Iran’s energy program that also makes the Middle East more stable.  Menendez, a longtime ally of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is siding with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has attempted to derail the Iran deal at every turn.

As James Traub wrote in Foreign Policy earlier this week:

 The reason why Menendez and others really are marching on a path to war is that they are demanding an outcome which Iran manifestly will not accept: zero enrichment. As Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association, puts it, “This is a strategy based upon hope that is not supported by the evidence of Iranian actions over the past decade, its past statements, or common sense.”….

I have no idea why Menendez and other Democrats believe that more pressure will make Iran abandon a core tenet of the revolution and thus undermine their claim to rule. (I asked for an interview, but the New Jersey senator was not available.) Maybe they believe it because [Netanyahu] has made zero enrichment his own bottom line.

So who is Menendez, and how did he rise to become the preeminent foreign policy official in the legislative branch of US government?

Menendez is the son of Cuban immigrants who came to the United States in 1953 for economic opportunity (not, as you might believe, to flee Fidel Castro, who was in 1953 still six years away from overthrowing the US-supported dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista).  Menendez spent his childhood in New Jersey and rose to political prominence in the Democratic machine politics of Union City, which was once known as ’10 Percent City,’ and not because its residents were tithing Christians.  Initially a protégé of Union City mayor and New Jersey political powerbroker William Musto, Menendez broke with his mentor only after Musto’s indictment for skimming.  Though Musto was ultimately convicted and served five years in prison, he still managed to defeat Menendez when the future senator challenged him for the mayorship in 1982.  But Menendez eventually won the office in 1986, then became a member of the New Jersey State Assembly, the New Jersey State Senate and in 1993, a member of the US House of Representatives.

For nearly as long as he’s chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez has been under investigation by a Florida grand jury in connection with potential misconduct with respect to one of Menendez’s top donors, Salomen Melgen, a Miami eye surgeon who moved to Florida from the Dominican Republic in 1980.  Though the nastiest rumors about Melgen and Menendez cavorting with underage prostitutes were probably false, Menendez admitted to violating Senate ethics rules when he forgot to reimburse Melgen for two private jet flights to the Dominican Republic in 2010.  Other accusations are less salacious but potentially illegal — Menendez is accused of intervening on Melgen’s behalf in respect of a billing dispute between Melgen and the federal government’s Medicare offices and in favor of a port security contract in the Dominican Republic that would have benefitted Melgen financially.  

The grand jury hasn’t issued any charges against Menendez, and prosecutors may ultimately choose to drop the matter, but it’s not best practices for the Senate’s top foreign policy voice to be implicated in an abuse of power scandal that involves, in part, international contracts.

The Iran bill follows Menendez’s push earlier this autumn to goad US president Barack Obama into a more hawkish position on Syria that would have seen US military attack on Bashar al-Assad.  Menendez actually made the following analogy in his push to win support for an attack earlier this year: Continue reading Why Menendez is such an awful Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair →

Iran

Rafsanjani, Mashaei both disqualified from running for Iranian presidency

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supremeleader

Iran’s Guardian Council has spoken — it has announced a list of eight presidential candidates for the June 14 election.Iran Flag Icon

As expected, the list doesn’t include Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, a key advisor and chief of staff to incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But the list also doesn’t include Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the original leaders of post-revolution Iran and himself a former president from 1989 to 2007, chair of the Expediency Discernment Council, and a former presidential candidate in 2005 as well.  Rafsanjani’s rejection wasn’t exactly unexpected, but it  has the potential to make the 2013 presidential election already as politically explosive as the 2009 presidential election, when Ahmadinejad won a victory that supporters of his opponent, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a former Iranian prime minister in the 1980s, who ran as a reformist candidate with the support of former reformist president Mohammad Khatami.

The Guardian Council is a 12-member council that vets presidential and parliamentary candidates and otherwise serves as Iran’s final constitutional interpretative body.  Its decisions are widely seen as a means of extending the interests of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei (pictured above), given that half of its members are appointed by the Supreme Leader and the other half are appointed by the Iranian parliament, which is dominated by Khamenei’s conservative (or ‘principlist’) supporters.

While Rafsanjani himself wasn’t part of the ‘Green movement’ that challenged the election results, Rafsanjani gently chided Iran’s regime for its harsh and sometimes lethal crackdown, which included jailing many activists and journalists, curtailing freedom of assembly, speech and the press, and resulted in the house arrest of both Mousavi and another reformist presidential candidate, Mehdi Karroubi.  Although Rafsanjani lost the chairmanship in 2011 of the Assembly of Experts, he remained the chair of the Expediency Council.*

Rafsanjani, a sometimes-ally and sometimes-rival to Khamenei, dominated Iranian politics in the 1980s alongside Khamenei.  Rafsanjani was the speaker of Iran’s parliament when Khamenei was president.  When Iran’s first Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini died in 1989, the Assembly of Experts chose Khamenei to succeed him, but Rafsanjani quickly won the first of two terms as president, therefore extending their dual dominance of Iranian politics through the end of the 1990s.  Given that Rafsanjani is the most powerful politician in Iran after Khamenei, he would have had the credibility and legitimacy as Iran’s president to challenge the principle authority of the Supreme Leader.

There are essentially three potential outcomes from here:

Rafsanjani accepts the decision, reformists back another candidate.

Rafsanjani could simply accept the Guardian Council’s decision, call on his supporters to back another candidate, and the election will proceed without Rafsanjani.  Given his relatively cautious and conciliatory past, this may well be the most likely outcome, especially if Rafsanjani, Khatami, Mousavi and others rally around one of the remaining candidates approved by the Guardian Council, not all of whom are necessarily conservatives.  Although five of the eight candidates are ‘principlist’ conservatives who are clearly loyal to the Supreme Leader and unlikely to challenge Khamenei’s imperative, the Guardian Council approved Rafsanjani’s former communication minister, Mohammad Gharazi, as well as the chief nuclear negotiator during the Khatami administration, Hassan Rowhani.  The Guardian Council also approved Khatami’s former vice president, Mohammad Reza Aref, who will be the most pro-reform candidate of the eight.

Rafsanjani appeals for Khamenei’s intervention.

Rafsanjani could initially challenge the Guardian Council’s decision and call upon Khamenei to step in to allow his candidacy.  That’s not unprecedented — in 2005, Khamenei intervened to request the Guardian Council approve two reformist candidates that it had previously rejected.  If Rafsanjani does go to  Khamenei, and Khamenei ultimately assents to the request, it would allow Rafsanjani to run while also demonstrating in a very public way Khamenei’s dominance.  If the presidential drama plays out this way, it wouldn’t be surprising at all — Rafsanjani remains a candidate, but he’ll owe his candidacy to the goodwill of the Supreme Leader.

Rafsanjani’s supporters boycott the election — or take to the streets.

If Rafsanjani or his supporters don’t accept his rejection, however, it could become very difficult very quickly for Khamenei.  If reformers and moderates boycott the election, it would be a significant setback to a regime that hopes to turn the page from the 2009 election, its violent aftermath and the antics of the Ahmadinejad administration.  If Rafsanjani’s supporters take to the streets in a way that’s even vaguely reminiscent of the 2009 ‘Green movement,’ it would be difficult for Khamenei to effect another election-related crackdown, especially against Rafsanjani, who was one of the leading figures of the revolution’s first generation.  Khamenei lost credibility both in Iran and abroad with the 2009 crackdown, but to take on Rafsanjani would amount to nothing less than a street war between Iran’s two top revolutionary figures at a time when Iran’s economy and its position in the world hang precariously in the balance.  Continue reading Rafsanjani, Mashaei both disqualified from running for Iranian presidency →

Iran

Iran awaits Guardian Council decision on Rafsanjani, other presidential contenders

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rafsanjani

In less than 24 hours, Iranians will know who will be clear to run in next month’s presidential election, the first since the June 2009 race that led to the ‘Green Movement’ that attracted global attention.Iran Flag Icon

That’s because within Iranian democracy, the Guardian Council, a 12-member body of clerics and attorneys that advises the Supreme Leader on constitutional matters, also functions as a gatekeeper for presidential and parliamentary candidates in Iran.  In theory, the Guardian Council approves only those candidates who meet the criteria to run for the presidency.  In reality, it means that minor, independent, secular, liberal, and/or female candidates, or anyone who appears too radical a threat to the current system or simply deemed unacceptable by the Supreme Leader, can be excluded from the race.  It also means that the Guardian Council can shape the contours of the race by determining the number of relative conservatives and reformists.

As such, although 686 presidential candidates — including 30 women — have registered to run in the June 14 presidential race, just a handful are expected to be confirmed to run.  In the 2009 election, for example, the Guardian Council approved just four candidates out of 476 initial hopefuls; in the 2005 election, the Guardian Council approved just six candidates from among 1,014.

But the question on everyone’s mind is whether the Guardian Council will approve Hashemi Rafsanjani (pictured above), widely seen as the most powerful politician in Iran after the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.  Rafsanjani, who served previously as Iran’s president from 1989 to 1997, is as the current chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, a 34-member body that mediates between the elected Iranian parliament and the Guardian Council.  He placed first in the first round of the 2005 presidential election, but ultimately lost widely in the runoff to the more conservative and populist Tehran mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  As Khamenei’s contemporary, Rafsanjani was a political rival in the 1980s when Khamenei was Iran’s president (before his 1989 elevation as Supreme Leader), and that makes him a potential president with the profile and support base to potentially challenge Khamenei as Supreme Leader.  On the other hand, Rafsanjani is someone Khamenei knows well, even if they’re not best friends, is somewhat of a consensus-builder, and would be unlikely to unleash the kind of erratic leadership that Ahmadinejad has embraced.

In light of the controversial aftermath of the 2009 election, during which ‘Green movement’ supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi took to the streets in opposition to the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad’s reelection, the regime’s crackdown left many reformists, journalists and others killed or in jail (Mousavi and others remain under house arrest even today).  As a result, many of the movement’s backers have settled upon Rafsanjani as their preferred candidate.  That includes former president Mohammad Khatami, who served as president from 1997 to 2005 as a strong advocate for liberalization in both domestic and foreign affairs, though he wasn’t necessarily effective at enacting reform.

Rafsanjani himself didn’t openly support the ‘Green movement’ in the wake of the 2009 election, but he made some remarks indicating, ever so gently, his preference for the right to open speech, free assembly, and greater press freedom, and his opposition to the harshness of the crackdown.  Though he’s certainly not as reformist as Mousavi and Khatami, he’s never been a full-throated conservative either, which makes him in many ways a great compromise choice in light of the post-2009 battles.  At age 78, he was Iran’s president at the end of the war with Iraq in the 1980s, so he’s far from the kind of fresh face who would push for rapid change.  But for all the reasons above, he’d start the race with the support of Iran’s reform movement and he has the personal platform to push through reforms that Khatami could not a decade ago.

But Rafsanjani’s disqualification, given his status as a former president, would be unprecedented in Iranian politics, and could well lead to the kind of widespread protests that followed the 2009 election. His opponents in the Guardian Council may well be looking to Rafsanjani’s advanced age as an excuse to disqualify him, according to Iranian new reports today:

Iran’s Guardian Council Spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei says the body may consider the physical condition of presidential hopefuls in its approval process. If an individual, who is supposed to carry out a macro executive task, can work for only a few hours a day, he cannot be approved, Kadkhodaei said in an interview with Iran’s Arabic-language al-Alam news network. The Guardian Council may take physical condition into consideration in its vetting of presidential hopefuls but no discussion has been held yet regarding the issue, he added.

Given that Khamenei is just five years younger than Rafsanjani, I’m not sure that’s such an incredibly useful precedent, and I’m not sure that it will ultimately be the reason for his disqualification, if it happens.

So what happens if Rafsanjani isn’t permitted to run?

Continue reading Iran awaits Guardian Council decision on Rafsanjani, other presidential contenders →