Foreign policy reports:
“Iran is a country with a government that was elected and
that sits in the United Nations,” Kerry said in France standing
alongside French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. “And it is important
for us to deal with nation-states in a way that acts in the best
interests of all of us in the world.”
The comment is similar to what Hagel said on Jan. 31 when he told the
Senate Armed Services Committee Iran was “an elected, legitimate
government, whether we agree or not.”… Hagel had to walk back his declaration that Iran was “an elected,
legitimate government” after being challenged in the hearing by
Democratic New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. “I can understand if you meant it’s a legal entity that has
international relations and has diplomatic relations, that is a member
of the UN, I do not see Iran or the Iranian government as a legitimate
government, and I’d like your thoughts on that,” Gillibrand said.
Iran is not led by an elected leader. Its Supreme Leader is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and he does not stand for popular election. The current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad partook in a sham election, and the American Secretary of State should know that the 2009 vote was rigged rather than legitimize the radical Islamist regime that remains the chief sponsor of global terrorism. After the mock election, Ahmadenijad then brutally and violently suppressed the opposition protesters in the streets.
The final vote: 58-41.
The Republican Senators who voted for cloture, thus assuring that his nomination would head to the floor for a full Senate vote where the Democrats were certain to give him the nod, are named here:
Alexander
Ayotte
Blunt
Burr
Chambliss
Coburn
Collins
Corker
Flake
Graham
Hatch
McCain
Murkowski
Sessions
Thune
The Republican Senators who actually voted in favor of Chuck Hagel when the full Senate took the vote: Cochran, Johanns, Shelby, and Rand Paul.
The Jerusalem Post reports:
As Iran and the world’s major powers begin talks in Kazakhstan on Tuesday on curbing its nuclear program, an Israeli official said the goals needed to be clear: an end to Iran’s uranium enrichment, and the transfer out of the country of all the uranium already enriched.
It is much preferable if these goals were met though diplomacy, the official said, but added that if diplomacy did not work, these goals needed to be met “through another method.”
The official said that Israel has been conducting ongoing discussions with key players in the international community in advance of the renewed talks.
A US official said on Monday that the P5+1 – US, Russia, China, Britain, Germany and France – would offer Iran some sanctions relief during the talks in Almaty if Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear program.
The Jerusalem Post reports:
Palestinian terrorists broke a three month ceasefire on Tuesday and fired a rocket from Gaza into southern Israel. The rocket fell on a road south of Ashkelon causing some damage to a road, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
National Review Online reports:
“Now wait,” Farrakhan told the crowd. “He said this to
Aaron David Miller in the book The Much-Too-Promised Land. And guess
what? I said the same thing 30 years ago at the National Press Club in
Washington, and they have not left me alone since. Special interests
along with Zionist AIPAC are robbing America of the principle of
democracy and representative government. The record is there. Now, 30
years later, after beating the heck out of me for all those years,
they’re finally getting up enough courage to tell it like it is.” After arguing that the media is controlled by Jewish interests, he
applauded Hagel’s nomination. “Senator Hagel is in trouble,” Farrakhan
said. “But America needs a man in Congress like that, who’s not a rubber
stamp for others. You need a man like Senator Hagel as your secretary
of defense because a man with a mind like that will keep you out of
fighting somebody else’s wars. You need a man in government that has
another opinion that is not controlled, and if the Senate does not
confirm him as defense secretary because of his opinion on Israel, that
only proves that the Senate in the U.S. Congress is controlled by the
Israeli lobby. And it also sentences America to war with Iran for the
state of Israel.”