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Republican letter to Iran shakes ‘global trust’ in US: Kerry

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US Secretary of State John Kerry has condemned an open letter by Republican senators aimed at sabotaging President Barack Obama’s efforts to reach a nuclear accord with Iran, saying it has shaken “global trust” in the United States.

“This risks undermining the confidence that foreign governments in thousands of important agreements commit to,” Kerry told lawmakers in Washington, DC on Wednesday.

He was testifying alongside Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill.

Kerry said that his reaction to the news of the letter was of “utter disbelief”.

In a bizarre move on Monday, a group of 47 Republican senators ignored protocol and sent an open letter to Iran, warning that whatever agreement reached with Obama would be a “mere executive agreement” that could be revoked “with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

Kerry said the letter “purports to tell the world that if you want to have any confidence in your dealings with America they have to negotiate with 535 members of Congress.”
He stated that such a notion was “both untrue and profoundly a bad suggestion.”

“No one is questioning anybody’s right to dissent. Any senator can go to the floor any day and raise any of the questions that were raised in that,” Kerry said, adding, but “this letter ignores more than two centuries of precedent in the conduct of American foreign policy.”

The letter appears at a time when Kerry is preparing to return to Switzerland to participate in the ongoing nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 countries – the US, Britain, France, China, Russia, and Germany, which have entered a sensitive final stage.

Iran and the P5+1 are holding negotiations to work out a final deal aimed at ending the longstanding standoff over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

The White House on Tuesday lashed out at the senators who signed the controversial letter and called it a “reckless” and “misguided” Republican stunt.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters on Monday in Tehran that the Republican letter has “no legal value and is mostly a propaganda ploy.”

Zarif said it appears to be an attempt to disrupt the nuclear talks underway between Iran and the P5+1 countries. “It is very interesting that while negotiations are still in progress and while no agreement has been reached, some political pressure groups are so afraid of even the prospect of an agreement that they resort to unconventional methods, unprecedented in diplomatic history.”

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