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Sunday 1 March 2015 - 10:07

Netanyahu using Congress speech to get re-elected: Ex-US lawmaker

Story Code : 444176
Netanyahu using Congress speech to get re-elected: Ex-US lawmaker
Last month, US House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner invited Netanyahu to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress on March 3 about the “threat” of a nuclear deal with Iran.
 
The invitation was extended hours after President Barack Obama threatened to veto any sanctions legislation against Iran during his State of the Union address.
 
“It’s all relating to Netanyahu and his campaign for re-election more than anything else,” Findley said on Saturday. “To me it’s as if he sees it as a very important element in his campaign for re-election as a prime minister.”
 
The address will come only two weeks before the prime minister faces a tight general election.
 
Findley went on to say that Netanyahu’s “interest in making a speech is already unhelpful to the US national interest and if he actually goes ahead and does make the speech, it’s actually a serious setback for the US attempt to work out a satisfactory well-enforced deal with Iran.”
 
The Israeli premier is expected to argue that the nuclear agreement taking shape now would leave Iran with a vast nuclear infrastructure, posing an existential threat to Israel.
 
Netanyahu speech to rupture Iran talks 
 
The planned speech will “cause a serious rupture in the negotiations” between Iran and the P5+1, said Findley, a Republican from Illinois who served on Capitol Hill for 22 years and has had many encounters with the Israeli lobby.
 
Iran and the P5+1 group of  states – the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia, and Germany –  are holding talks to narrow their remaining differences ahead of a July 1 deadline for a final comprehensive agreement.
 
Israel has repeatedly accused Iran of having a desire to obtain nuclear weapons and using the talks to buy time.
 
Iran rejects the allegation, arguing that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
 
US history of mistreating Iran 
 
Elsewhere in his remarks, Findley said that the US has a long history of mistreating the Iranian government.
 
“We mistreated the government of Iran years ago in 1953 when we conspired with the British to overthrow the publicly-elected democratic government of Iran held by [former prime minister Mohammad] Mossadeq, because the British and the US were conspiring to restore our control over oil in Iran, and that was a disgraceful chapter in American history,” he noted.
 
“We also worked with [former Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein in his lengthy and bloody war with Iran (1980-88),” the former US congressman said.  
 
“I don’t pretend to know all the details of it but we were certainly helping Saddam Hussein in a war that cost nearly 1 million casualties for the Iranian government.”
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