WSJ: France is again adopting the toughest line against Iran in negotiations aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear program, potentially placing Paris at odds with the Obama administration as a diplomatic deadline to forge an agreement approaches at month-end.That's not good enough for Benito Obama. He's gotta have his agenda-driven time lines. He wants a very bad deal when he wants it, preferably sooner than later to sidestep Congress!
President Barack Obama called French President François Hollande on Friday to discuss the Iran diplomacy and try to unify their positions. The presidents “reaffirmed their commitment” to a deal “while noting that Iran must take steps to resolve several remaining issues,” the White House said.
French diplomats have been publicly pressing the U.S. and other world powers not to give ground on key elements—particularly the speed of lifting United Nations sanctions and the pledge to constrain Iran’s nuclear research work—ahead of the March 31 target.
Paris also appears to be operating on a different diplomatic clock than Washington, arguing that the date is an “artificial” deadline and that global powers should be willing to wait Tehran out for a better deal if necessary.
Obama administration officials have said that expected moves by the U.S. Congress to put new sanctions on Iran as soon as next month limit their ability to extend the diplomacy. But French officials took exception.
“Making the end of March an absolute deadline is counterproductive and dangerous,” France’s ambassador to the U.S., Gérard Araud, said via Twitter after the latest round of negotiations in Switzerland concluded Friday.
“No agreement without concrete decisions on issues beyond the enrichment capability question,” he said a day earlier, specifically mentioning the need for extensive monitoring and clarity on Iran’s past research work. Western officials believe they included the pursuit of nuclear-weapon capabilities.
Frightening how critically important despotic deals are to this man, but he doesn't have time to comment on Islamo-Nazi beheadings or attend soldiers' funerals or any number of situations that call for a genuine commander-in-chief. And when he does, it's off to the links immediately after. He trades our allies for enemies like it's nothing, like it's fantasy football picks. He couldn't even pick up the phone to talk to Netanyahu on Wednesday. He was too busy with his NCAA brackets! We should all feel like Sheen (YES, Charlie freakin' Sheen!)...
TMZ: Charlie Sheen just UNLOADED on President Obama -- tearing POTUS apart because he filled out an NCAA Final Four bracket ... and telling TMZ Sports, "We deserve better from our President."
Earlier in the day, Sheen had posted a tweet -- in which he rips Obama for making college basketball picks instead of attending funerals for soldiers.
"I don't care about the picks. I care about wasting that kind of time when the world is in the state it's in right now. And it just makes me insane! It's not cool. It's not cool, and it's not fair to the families and to who we are as a republic. It's not fair, and we deserve better from our president, and I demand it!"