Deal

The chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Michael McCaul (R., TX), is trying to get the White House to pay attention to what Iran is doing around the Middle East. Earlier in the week, McCaul wrote a letter to Obama arguing that the clerical regime “has demonstrated hostility…

Paul Ryan, the leading Republican candidate to be the next speaker of the House, will support John Boehner's final budget deal. 

That’s what many defense experts are saying about the two-year budget deal that’s being cut by congressional leaders and the White House.  Byron Callan, longtime analyst for Capital Alpha Partners, which provides research to financial firms, rates the prospective deal as “defense positive.”

That’s what many defense experts are saying about the two-year budget deal that’s being cut by congressional leaders and the White House.  Byron Callan, longtime analyst for Capital Alpha Partners, which provides research to financial firms, rates the prospective deal as “defense positive.”

Secretary of State John Kerry spoke Wednesday at a Department of Energy event at the U.S. Navy Heritage Center in Washington, D.C., where he noted the official implementation of the nuclear deal reached with Iran this summer. Throughout the negotiations with Iran, that country's religious leader,…

The White House is hitting back at Hillary Clinton a week after the Democratic presidential candidate claimed to have looked at the Trans-Pacific Parternship. The trade deal, the White House says, has not been released to the public. Clinton, for her part, claimed last week to have looked at the…

A top Hillary Clinton aide from the State Department talked up the former secretary of state's support for the trade deal just yesterday in an interview with National Public Radio. The aide, who has been defending Clinton's policies publicly, is Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former director of policy…

Yeganeh Torbati of Reuters reports:

President Obama said today that the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal would cover "40 percent of the global economy." Obama also revealed that eventually the agreement will be made available to the public.

Senator Ben Sasse went to the Iranian embassy to blast President Obama's "terrible deal" with Iran:

President Barack Obama is celebrating the Senate's Iran deal vote, in which he failed to gain a majority in support of his top foreign policy initiative.

Last Friday, I moderated a panel at Hudson Institute titled, “Why is Qassem Suleimani Smiling? The Iran Deal and Sanctions Relief for Terrorists.” (See video of the event here.) The panel’s focus was not speculative—for instance, how the regime might spend the signing bonus promised by the Joint…

A week ago, I suggested that—contrary to conventional wisdom and perhaps even to first-blush common sense—the GOP field might benefit from one or more new candidates. One of the well-qualified dark horses I mentioned was third-term Rep. Mike Pompeo from Wichita, Kansas.

Jim Webb, the Democratic presidential candidate, has come out against President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. He made the case in a TV interview this weekend:

Chuck Schumer is coming under fire from President Obama's former top political adviser, David Axelrod. The former advisor is using Twitter to question Schumer's decision to oppose Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. 

When Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced that he would vote against the nuclear deal with Iran, he didn’t just take a position -- he rejected every major argument President Obama has made on the agreement’s behalf. Schumer argues this is not a deal that prevents Iran from getting nuclear weapons,…

President Obama is doubling down on his comparison of Republicans to hardliners in Iran. In an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, Obama says, "What I said is absolutely true factually."

Chuck Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, has released a statement saying he will oppose President Obama's Iran nuclear deal.

The Huffington Post reports that Chuck Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, will oppose President Obama's Iran nuclear deal:

In his speech today at American University on the Iran nuclear arms deal, President Obama asked for critics to evaluate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on its own merits. “Unfortunately,” said Obama, “we're living through a time in American politics where every foreign policy decision is…

President Obama said that Iranian hardliners are "making common cause with the Republican caucus" in a speech today in Washington, D.C.:

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, signed this month by the six world powers with Iran lifts a UN arms embargo by 2020, sanctions against Iran’s ballistic missile program by 2023, most nuclear restrictions by 2025, and a cap on low-enriched uranium stockpile by 2030. Most sanctions…

In a new national poll, Quinnipiac asked the question in as straightforward a way as possible: "Do you support or oppose the nuclear deal with Iran?" And, "Do you think the nuclear deal with Iran would make the world safer or less safe?"

One man was responsible for the deaths or injuries of thousands of American soldiers in Iraq. That same man is responsible for sowing sectarian conflict today in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. And yet, in the nuclear deal with Iran, this man, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds…

A top Democratic believes President Obama may break the law to implement the Iran deal. The Democrat is Brad Sherman, a congressman from California, who made the comments after meeting with Obama personally about the Iran deal.

Marcus Weisgerber at Defense One writes that:

At the end of an exchange between Sen. Tom Cotton and Gen. Martin Dempsey regarding the number of American servicemen killed by the Iranians, Cotton asks if Quds Force chief Qassem Suleimani was responsible for the explosively formed penetrators that took the lives of several hundred Americans.…

Rep. Grace Meng of New York has come out against the Iran nuclear deal. Meng's statement reads as follows:

Secretary of State John Kerry testified on Capitol Hill today the U.S. government will not be revealing the contents of secret side deals with Iran to the American people. Senator Tom Cotton wanted to know why it can't be made public. 

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified on Capitol Hill today that it was his recommendation that the U.S. not lift its sanctions on conventional weapons and ballistic missiles that were part of the Iran deal.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter admitted in testimony Capitol Hill this morning that Iran will not be changing its bad behavior as a result of the nuclear deal.

A former ambassador in the Clinton administration, Marc Ginsberg, knocked Secretary of State John Kerry for sounding "like a used care salesman" earlier today on national television. Watch here:

Secretary of State John Kerry said on Capitol Hill today that Iran "may" kill Americans or Israelis. Watch here:

This week, the Wall Street Journal wrote that in a report to Capitol Hill last week, the Obama administration said “it was unlikely Iran would admit to having pursued a covert nuclear weapons program, and that such an acknowledgment wasn’t critical to verifying Iranian commitments in the future.”

Defenders of the nuclear deal with Iran are right to ask what the alternatives are to the offer that’s now on the table. What’s excessive is their confidence that the only alternative to this deal is war. In fact, the alternative is not hard to describe and is not terribly dramatic.

The following is an excerpt from a fact sheet prepared by Omri Ceren of the Israel Project that explains the significance of the Obama administration’s latest concession to Tehran—the reported collapse on the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program.

Secretary of State John Kerry's warning that Israel will be "blamed" if Congress opposes the Iran agreement conjures up troubling memories of other instances in which Israel or Jews were warned they might be blamed for international conflicts.

President Obama has promoted the recently agreed Iran deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as “a comprehensive, long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” There are many fallacies and ambiguities in this statement.

New York assemblyman, Dov Hikind, a Democrat, was arrested outside Senator Chuck Schumer's office while protesting the Iran nuclear deal. The Israeli news outlet Arutz Sheva has video:

The Pentagon is illustrating Defense Secretary Ash Carter's trip to Israel with a picture of any angry-looking Benjamin Netanyahu. The picture is available on the Defense Department's website:

In the summer of 1994 the Clinton administration faced the gravest crisis on the Korean peninsula since the signing of the armistice agreement in 1953. The genesis of the crisis had come in 1992 when Pyongyang concluded an agreement accepting the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear…

The Republican National Committee has come out against the Iran nuclear deal, which it labels as part of the "Clinton-Obama foreign policy." The RNC makes their case in a 33-second web video which will be released later today:

Last week, former Vice President Dick Cheney criticized President Barack Obama for the Iranian nuclear deal. We're not "credible anymore," Cheney said, saying that our allies around the world no longer trust us. 

A recently released Pew poll finds that only 38% approve President Obama's deal with Iran. A plurality disapproves of the deal.

A fact sheet that Omri Ceren at the Israel Project prepared details why the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action’s inspection and verification regime is unlikely to stop Iran from a nuclear breakout.

What will Iran do with the big “signing bonus” – perhaps as much as $150 billion – coming its way thanks to the nuclear pact negotiated by the Obama administration?

As Reuters reports:

One of the new talking points for defenders of the Obama White House’s Iran deal is that lifting sanctions will hurt the regime’s hardliners, in particular the Revolutionary Guard. It may be true, the argument goes, that some of the $150 billion “signing bonus” in immediate sanctions relief will…

President Obama assumes Congress will get in line and follow the United Nations's approval of the Iranian nuclear deal.

In the wake of the Iran deal, a letter to President Obama congratulating him appeared online. It was issued by something called The Iran Project, the stated purpose of which is to improve "the Relationship Between the U.S. and Iranian Governments" and was purportedly signed by more than 100 former…

Jonathan Schanzer and Mark Dubowitz, writing for Foreign Policy:

Ames, Iowa

Secretary of State John Kerry told NBC's Chuck Todd that "the arms and the missiles" were "thrown in as an add-on to this nuclear agreement."

Secretary of State John Kerry defended the Obama administration's decision to take the Iran deal to the United Nations before the U.S. Congress votes on it. Kerry made the remarks in an interview this morning on ABC News:

"Without a deal, the international sanctions regime will unravel with little ability to reimpose them."

Susan Rice, President Obama's national security advisor, said on CNN that at least some money that Iran will receive from the nuclear deal will be used by the regime to support terrorism. 

Elliott Abrams, writing for National Review Online:

Aaron David Miller, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Just one day after the Iran deal was announced, the State Department tweeted a video in which Under Secretary Wendy Sherman, a lead U.S. negotiator, recounts something Secretary of State John Kerry said at the close of the Iran negotiations. 

Former Vice President Dick Cheney blasted the Iran deal in remarks last night to Sean Hannity:

Hillary Clinton supports the Iran nuclear deal. The Democratic presidential candidate expressed her support for the deal in an email to reporters.

Senator Tom Cotton, Republican senator from Arkansas, blasted the Iranian nuclear as a "terrible, dangerous mistake" this morning on MSNBC:

President Obama's Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, is warning all not to be "deceived by the propaganda of the warmongering Zionist regime." He made the statement on Twitter.

Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, released the following statement blasting the nuclear deal reached this morning with Iran:

We have a deal. It's a deal worse than even we imagined possible. It's a deal that gives the Iranian regime $140b in return for ... effectively nothing: no dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program, no anytime/anywhere inspections, no curbs on Iran's ballistic missile program, no maintenance of the…

Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is blasting the Iran nuclear deal. "I will refer later to the details of the agreement, but before that, I would like to say here and now – when you are willing to make an agreement at any cost, this is the result," Netanyahu said.

Democratic senator Bob Menendez ripped the Iran deal in an interview this morning on ABC:

The Associated Press reports:

Secretary of State John Kerry wants a "couple" more days to negotiate with the Iranians. And he wants privacy. 

Bill Kristol, with Rep. Joaquin Castro, Rep. Tom Cole, and Anne Gearan, earlier today on ABC's This Week:

Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif has released a YouTube message aimed apparently at his American negotiators. In the video, Zarif even suggests his nation and the United States are int he fight together against terrorism: "Our common threat today is the growing menace of violent extremism and…

Senator Tom Cotton, writing for the Washington Examiner:

The Emergency Committee for Israel has released an ad urging voters to hold Senator Chuck Schumer to his Iran deal red line:

Here's a news bulletin from the Iran talks in Vienna:

Vienna

Kyle Balluck of The Hill reports: 

For the last several days, State Department spokesperson Marie Harf has been at pains to explain why Iran is not violating the interim nuclear agreement, or Joint Plan of Action. For the last few days, the Obama administration has been pushing back against a New York Times article published Monday…

An FPI bulletin from Tzvi Kahn:

President Obama wants Congress to send the trade bill to his desk. Right away.

John Kerry is hoping to offer North Korea "a more legitimate entry road to the global community and to the norms of international behavior." The example the secretary of state has for the rogue regime? Iran.

Speaking at a press conference at Camp David, President Obama said that he'd "welcome an Iran that plays a responsible role in the region." Watch here:

In an editorial for the new issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Bill Kristol notes the "ludicrous" "guarantee" Secretary of State John Kerry made last week regarding Iran's so-called breakout capacity towards nuclear weapons. Kerry told Israelis:

Max Boot, writing for Commentary:

A new ad from the Center for Security Policy says the mullahs are laughing in Tehran about President Obama's concessions to Iran in the nuclear negotiations:

In an interview with an Israeli media outlet, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry accuses critics of the Iranian nuclear deal hysterical.

As always, Winston Churchill said it best. Here he is on March 24, 1938, speaking less than two weeks after the Anschluss, the Nazi annexation of Austria:

A new poll finds that a majority of voters believes President Barack Obama is "being too soft" on the terror-sponsoring Iranian regime. Only 2 percent believe Obama is "being too tough."

I've received several inquiries asking me to spell out some implications of this week's editorial. Here goes:

President Obama has long known that the real decision maker in Iran is Ayatollah Khamenei, the so-called supreme leader. While other Iranian officials have negotiated with Western powers over the mullahs’ nuclear program, Khamenei’s opinion is the only one that really counts. It is for this reason…

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is going to cause big trouble for the Obama administration. In a speech today, Khamenei denounced the White House’s spin tactics—according to the rahbar, there is no nuclear deal. Counter to what the White House has been peddling since it announced the…

Governor Scott Walker has responded to a shot taken at him by President Obama with his own strong statement.

Under President Obama's deal with Iran, the nuclear breakout time for the rogue regime will shrink to zero. Obama admitted as much in an interview with National Public Radio.

In an interview with National Public Radio, President Obama said that it would be a "fundamental misjudgment" to require that Iran recognize the Jewish state of Israel as part of the nuclear deal. The condition, rejected by Obama, was one that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested: A…

In the course of trying to explain to Tom Friedman why his diplomatic outreach to Iran is no threat to America or our allies, President Obama sounded for a brief moment like the kind of warmonger he is normally heard denouncing.

One of many startling statements in President's Obama interview with Tom Friedman is his assertion that he's seeking “to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see whether or not we can at least take the nuclear issue off the table.”

Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic senator from California, warned Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to "contain" himself. She was reacting to his criticism of the deal the U.S. is working on with Iran.

It's worth watching President Bill Clinton hail the virtues of the nuclear deal with North Korea, in this video from October 21, 1994:

Commentators have exposed how bad the Iran deal is in various ways; the point, however, is to kill it.

Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

Hillary Clinton released a statement saying it was "absolutely crucial" to reach "a final deal" with Iran. Though the former secretary of state admitted it "won't be easy."

The Emergency Committee for Israel calls on every member of Congress to "do his duty and act to kill this proposed deal."

In a statement today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran. 

David E. Sanger and Michael R. Gordon at the New York Times report that:

David E. Sanger and Michael R. Gordon at the New York Times report that:

Iran is an opportunity, not a threat; it’s a potential partner, not an enemy.

An Iranian journalist writing about the nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran has defected. In an interview Amir Hossein Motaghi, has some harsh words for his native Iran. He also has a damning indictment of America's role in the nuclear negotiations.

In an interview this evening on Fox News, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki would not promise that Americans would get to see the details of a nuclear deal with Iran before it's "signed, sealed, delivered."

Marco Rubio said that if President Obama inks a deal with Iran, he'd revoke it if he becomes president of the United States. He made the remarks in an interview with Hugh Hewitt:

In his annual statement marking the Persian new year, President Obama said he believes that Iran and the U.S. “should be able” to resolve the dispute over the mullahs’ nuclear program “peacefully, with diplomacy.”

Secretary of State John Kerry has released a statement mourning the death of the mother of Iran's president.

President Obama uses his Nowruz statement to speak directly to the Iranian people. In doing so, he compares Iranian hardliners to those Americans who are skeptical the president's deal with Iran will prevent the rogue nation from getting nuclear weapons capability. 

Senator Joe Lieberman, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

Josh Rogin reports:

Asked today on MSNBC whether he'd sign the letter to Iran again, Ted Cruz insisted he would. But with one slight modification. He'd use larger print. 

The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne doesn’t like the Iran open letter released by 47 Republican senators last week. And his column today makes clear that he really doesn’t like my support of that open letter.

Sunday night, Stephen Hayes noted (via Twitter) a Times of Israel article that the 2015 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Communities delivered annually by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to a Senate committee had "removed Iran and Hezbollah from its list of…

While addressing the press during a visit to Egypt, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke about the ongoing negotiations with Iran over that country's nuclear programs. As he and President Obama have several times in the past, Kerry cited a report that Iran's "Supreme Leader" issued a "fatwa" against…

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas explained the reasoning behind the letter he and 46 other senators sent to Iran about the nuclear deal this morning on CBS. Watch Cotton's interview with Bob Schieffer here:

In a Saturday night letter from President Obama's chief of staff Denis McDonough to Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Bob Corker, the White House confirmed that in fact the United Nations will play a key role in any nuclear deal that may be reached with Iran.

Finally, a debate about Iran. Last week, 47 Republican senators released a public letter addressed to the leaders of the Iranian regime. The letter made what might have seemed a self-evident point: If the Obama administration reaches a deal with Iran, Congress will not be bound by parts of the deal…

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal is encouraging all candidates -- Democrats and Republicans -- to sign the letter organized by Senator Tom Cotton warning that any Iran deal not accepted by Congress can be revoked.

President Obama will wait until after a nuclear deal with Iran is made to make the case to the American people that it's the right thing to do. He made the comment today after being asked about this letter from nearly 50 U.S. senators to Iran, which stated, "The next president could revoke such an…

The complete transcript of Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress:

Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the U.S. Congress that the problem with the proposed deal with Iran is that it "paves Iran's path to the bomb."

Susan Rice told AIPAC It was "neither realistic nor achievable" to expect Iran to stop enriching uranium:

Reuters reports:

Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a portion of his AIPAC speech today to list the times when Israel has defied U.S. warnings to act in its self defense.

How are the ongoing nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran playing out in the Iranian press? Well, the U.S. is being portrayed as desperate.

Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska coherently explains the President Obama's negotiations with Iran, and says that his administration "isn’t negotiating" but getting its "lunch money taken in an alley."

The Washington Post editorializes:

The Obama administration is angry with Israel. Here's the administration's house organ, the New York Times, this morning:

Foreign Policy reports that the U.S. believes Iran is cheating on U.N. nuclear sanctions. "The United States has privately accused Iran of going on an international shopping spree to acquire components for a heavy-water reactor that American officials have long feared could be used in the…

Congress is closing in on a final spending deal in the last week of the lame duck session, Politico reports. Negotiations between the Republican House and the Democratic Senate on appropriations are nearly complete, and the impending deal would be, according to senior congressional reporter David…

He did it again, as we should have expected.  Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei walked us right up to the finish line, spat on us, and walked away. Months and months of secret and public talks, letters, back channels, and gestures produced nothing of the sort the president, assorted…

Today we learned that it has been impossible to reach an agreement with Iran over its nuclear weapons program. Even a short "framework" agreement or one-pager was beyond reach. And this, despite the extension of the talks from the original deadline last spring.

The deadline for the Joint Plan of Action ended it seems without a final agreement between the P5+1 and Iran over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. It’s not yet clear what happens next.

Negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program drag on as ponderously as the last two minutes of an NBA playoff game.  And now, as Sangwon Yoon of Bloomberg reports:

Yesterday Senate Republicans, led by Lindsey Graham and Bob Corker, tried to force a vote on the Iran Nuclear Negotiations Act of 2014, which would re-impose sanctions on Iran waived during the negotiating process if the P5+1 fail to sign a deal by the November 24 deadline.

Adam Kredo reports for the Washington Free Beacon:

Republican governor Nathan Deal has spent much of his race for reelection talking up Georgia’s progress since he took office in 2011: targeted tax reform, economic development, a bigger education budget. His ads tout that the state has added 175,000 jobs and make the vague, hard-to-verify claim…

Thirty-one U.S. senators have sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry to express concern that the U.S. might sign a bad nuclear deal with Iran.

Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, later this afternoon at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. Matt Lee of Associated Press reports on Twitter:

Time magazine is reporting that during an interview about the deal to trade Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo, when "[a]sked whether the Taliban would be inspired by the exchange to kidnap others, a commander laughed. 'Definitely.'" The response should not come as a…

A U.S. Army soldier goes missing at night from a remote post on the edge of enemy territory. Depressed and anxious, he has expressed doubts about the U.S. mission and disillusionment with the war. He allegedly leaves behind a note recording these doubts. There are some reports that he consumes…

The head of an Iranian nuclear organization, Ali Akbar, says the "entire nuclear activity of Iran is going on," despite the nuclear deal reached with the United States and other Western nations. Akbar made the comments in an interview with PressTV, an Iranian propaganda outfit.

Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon reports:

The Iranian president tells Fareed Zakaria of CNN that, under the nuclear deal, there will be no limitations to nuclear technology and no destruction of centrifuges:

Foreign Minister Zarif of Iran said on CNN that the White House is getting the nuclear deal wrong -- and that they don't have to give up anything: 

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, released this statement on the Iran nuclear deal:

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani is taking to Twitter to gloat about the nuclear deal his country struck with the U.S. and other Western countries.

Iran's chief negotiator, Abbas Araqchi, who helped his country secure the nuclear deal with the U.S. and other Western countries, is claiming victory.

President Barack Obama talked briefly about the Iran nuclear deal and said "give peace a chance." Via the pool report:

Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon:

House majority leader Eric Cantor responds to the Iran deal:

Yesterday, the Obama administration announced an agreement regarding Iran's nuclear program had been reached.  But a statement about the enforcement of the deal made by a senior administration official during a background briefing on Sunday, however, is likely to further worry critics of the deal.…

Back in 2006, during a particularly low point in the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group issued a report in which the central contentious proposition was that “all key issues in the region are inextricably linked.” Accordingly, to stem the deterioration in Iraq…

The Iranians are saying the nuclear deal means the beginning of the end of sanctions. At least that's what a foreign ministry spokeswoman told the Iranian press.

Let me add a word to my comments from Tuesday night supporting the budget deal.

The Foreign Policy Initiative has released this statement from its board of directors in support of the Paul Ryan-Patty Murray budget deal:

The Tower.org reports:

A future historian would describe the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA) as having a profound effect on the United States. The BCA, he would write, was a critical step toward making America into a social democracy while ensuring its decline as a global military power. He would conclude that the law…

The budget deal announced today is a good deal for conservatives and Republicans.

A new Pew Poll released today shows the American public does not support the White House’s interim deal over the Iranian nuclear program. Conducted by the Pew Research Center and USA TODAY two weeks after the November 24 agreement struck at Geneva between the P5+1 powers and Iran, the national…

The Kuwaiti news outlet Al-Jarida reports that President Obama is seeking to arrange a trip to Tehran, Iran next year.

Blaise Misztal writes:

Iran will continue to enrich uranium under the new nuclear deal, according to the Iranian foreign minister.

The second line of the new nuclear deal with Iran is curious, to say the least: “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek or develop any nuclear weapons.”

Adam Kredo reports for the Washington Free Beacon:

Mark Dubowitz and Orde Kittrie, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Max Boot, writing for the Los Angeles Times:

Danielle Pletka on the Iran nuclear deal:

U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton believes the nuclear deal with Iran isn't a good one. "With this agreement, the United States has suffered an unmitigated, humiliating defeat and Iran has won a total victory. The United States will ease sanctions and give the mullahs billions of dollars in return for their…

New York senator Chuck Schumer is "disappointed" with the nuclear deal with Iran, according to a statement released by his Senate office. 

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reports that "Syria welcomes Geneva agreement between Iran and P5+1 countries." SANA is an organ of the Syrian regime.

Negotiations for an “interim” arrangement over Iran’s nuclear weapons program finally succeeded this past weekend, as Security Council foreign ministers (plus Germany) flew to Geneva to meet their Iranian counterpart.  After raising expectations of a deal by first convening on November 8-10, it…

The nuclear deal with Tehran is a "pause that refreshes" for Iran, says the Emergency Committee for Israel in a statement released tonight:

In light of the Geneva Agreement, I went back to read Winston Churchill's October 5, 1938, speech in the House of Commons on the Munich Agreement. Here are a few highlights:

Robert Zarate and Daniel Blumenthal, writing for Foreign Policy:

An infographic from the Israel Project, found at NoBombforIran.com:

According to one U.S. senator, the Obama administration is pushing a "fairly anti-Israeli" line as they advocate for a deal with Iran. 

So the Obama administration is, after all, capable of tough, bull-necked diplomacy. These guys go for the jugular—for them diplomacy is a blood sport where anything is licit so long as victory is the endgame. Too bad the White House deploys those skills not against U.S. adversaries but against…

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that the reported U.S.-Iran nuclear deal favors Iran. "Iran gives practically nothing and it gets a hell of a lot," Netanyahu said on CBS this morning. "That's not a good deal."

The French administration appears tougher on Iran than the Obama administration, reports from Geneva, where the nuclear egotiations are currently taking place, suggest. 

Speaker of the House John Boehner released this statement on the supposed U.S.-Iran deal:

The Emergency Committee for Israel released this statement on the Iran deal:

A very unusual statement from the Israel prime minister on the eve of a possible nuclear detail between the U.S. and Iran:

Even before the House vote on the so-called congressional deal to re-open the federal government and increase the debt limit, President Obama began to pivot to immigration: 

Here's the so-called deal that Congress is expected to approve tonight:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Jeffrey H. Anderson on the congressional deal to reopen the government and raise the debt limit:

House speaker John Boehner released a statement saying that the "fight will continue," but that it isn't feasible to block the deal between Senate Democrats and Republicans now:

Senator Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, announced a "deal" just now on the Senate floor:

Is our deliverance at hand?  There is "breaking news" that Obama and Biden will meet with Reid, McConnell, Boehner and Pelosi at the White House at 3 p.m.

Furloughed federal employees who like to play golf are in luck. There's a deal waiting for them, courtesy of the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Fred Barnes. Hosted by Michael Graham.

There will be no grand bargain.

What’s the purpose of Barack Obama’s “charm offensive?” And who is the target?

Senate minority leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, asks for another tax hike this morning:

President Barack Obama's staff used an autopen (a machine that mimics one's signature) to sign the "fiscal cliff" legislation that Congress passed on New Year's Day. There was no ceremony or photo-op for the autopen bill signing.

Metro stops in Washington, D.C. will now feature advertisements that warn of overspending. "Talk Is Cheap," the tagline on a series of ads reads. "Overspending Is Not."

After hailing the passage of the "fiscal cliff" last night, President Barack Obama laid down a marker on the debt ceiling: It will not, he said, be up for negotiation.