Rubio’s foreign policy disaster

Marco Rubio’s foreign policy disaster: Why he’s very confused about ISIS and Iran 

When you see Iran as the mothership of all evil, you're going to run into some logical problems 

By Jim Newell

The Senate tried ever so briefly to turn its foreign policy gaze away from Iran yesterday by holding a hearing with Secretary of State John Kerry about the White House’s AUMF proposal for the war against ISIS. The prospects for an AUMF continue to look disappointing. Though it’s not perfectly split along partisan lines, the basic breakdown remains that Republicans want to broaden the authorization and Democrats want to constrict it. And if they can’t reach a bipartisan agreement, the White House is perfectly fine with that: it will continue waging war on the shaky legal foundation of the post-9/11 AUMF, and it will get away with it. It’s not a great situation.

But the senators didn’t just fail to develop a path forward on the AUMF. They also failed to avoid saying stupid nonsense about Iran.

It was expected that the Iran negotiations would come up, since you don’t get the point man, John Kerry, in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing every day. Kerry, obviously, had some not nice things to say about Sen. Tom Cotton et al.’s “letter to Iran.” But Kerry was also dumbfounded by a question from Senator Marco Rubio that tried to link what he perceives as the administration’s lackluster military effort against the Islamic State to the nuclear negotiations with Iran.

But when Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), potential 2016 presidential candidate and leading light of the Republican Party, took the mike, he directed the conversation away from the Islamic State to the dominant foreign policy issue on Capitol Hill in recent weeks and what is quickly developing into the dominant foreign policy issue of the presidential race: America’s relations with Iran.

“I believe that much of our strategy with regards to ISIS is being driven by a desire not to upset Iran so that they don’t walk away from the negotiating table on the deal that you’re working on,” Rubio said to Secretary of State John F. Kerry. “Tell me why I’m wrong.”

“Because the facts completely contradict that,” Kerry replied. “But I’m not at liberty to discuss all of them here for a lot of different reasons.”

The Senate tried ever so briefly to turn its foreign policy gaze away from Iran yesterday by holding a hearing with Secretary of State John Kerry about the White House’s AUMF proposal for the war against ISIS. The prospects for an AUMF continue to look disappointing. Though it’s not perfectly split along partisan lines, the basic breakdown remains that Republicans want to broaden the authorization and Democrats want to constrict it. And if they can’t reach a bipartisan agreement, the White House is perfectly fine with that: it will continue waging war on the shaky legal foundation of the post-9/11 AUMF, and it will get away with it. It’s not a great situation.

But the senators didn’t just fail to develop a path forward on the AUMF. They also failed to avoid saying stupid nonsense about Iran.

It was expected that the Iran negotiations would come up, since you don’t get the point man, John Kerry, in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing every day. Kerry, obviously, had some not nice things to say about Sen. Tom Cotton et al.’s “letter to Iran.” But Kerry was also dumbfounded by a question from Senator Marco Rubio that tried to link what he perceives as the administration’s lackluster military effort against the Islamic State to the nuclear negotiations with Iran.

But when Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), potential 2016 presidential candidate and leading light of the Republican Party, took the mike, he directed the conversation away from the Islamic State to the dominant foreign policy issue on Capitol Hill in recent weeks and what is quickly developing into the dominant foreign policy issue of the presidential race: America’s relations with Iran.

“I believe that much of our strategy with regards to ISIS is being driven by a desire not to upset Iran so that they don’t walk away from the negotiating table on the deal that you’re working on,” Rubio said to Secretary of State John F. Kerry. “Tell me why I’m wrong.”

“Because the facts completely contradict that,” Kerry replied. “But I’m not at liberty to discuss all of them here for a lot of different reasons.”