By Patrick Goodenough | 
 
CNS News, December 9, 2016 – Former Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman may have supported Hillary Clinton for president, but he told an Iranian-American audience Thursday that he viewed the shift from the Obama to Trump administrations as “hopeful” with regard to U.S. policy on Iran.
“I must be very upfront for those that don’t know, I supported Secretary Clinton’s candidacy,” he said at a Capitol Hill event hosted by the Organization of Iranian-American Communities.
“But I’ll tell you when it comes to Iran that the change from the Obama administration to the Trump administration is, I think, a hopeful one.”
Lieberman said President-elect Donald Trump has called the Iran nuclear deal “a disaster – and I, of course, agree very much.”
“He has said in the worst of all cases he’s prepared to tear it up,” he said. “ But he’s certainly prepared to renegotiate it.”
Lieberman, a former Democratic senator from Connecticut who served as an independent in his later years in Congress, is now chairman of United Against a Nuclear Iran, a bipartisan lobby group that opposes the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
He pulled no punches Thursday about the Obama administration’s approach to Iran – and expressed optimism that the next administration will be very different.
“What we are going to see is a change from an administration that was so intent on improving our relations with Iran that it forgot our allies in the region in the Gulf Arab countries and Israel – and frankly to a certain extent, forgot our values,” he said.
“It forgot where we come from, who we are as Americans, which is to focus on freedom – of which there is none in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
“Now we go to a new administration, not protective or defensive of the Iran nuclear agreement but ready to challenge it, and I hope ready to challenge Iran on its domestic policies as well, and its expansionism, and on its support of terrorism.”
 Later in his speech Lieberman returned to Trump, describing him as a “strong negotiator.”
“He wrote the book, as we know, on ‘The Art of the Deal.’  And he has some steps he can take to right the relationship between the U.S. and Iran before we even begin to think about renegotiating the [nuclear] agreement.”
Among the things Trump was empowered to do, Lieberman said, would be to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, a step which he said: “would have severe economic consequences on the regime.”
The IRGC is deeply involved in multiple sectors of the Iranian economy – and in Iran’s terror-sponsorship.
Annual State Department reports on global terrorism for more than a decade have placed Iran at the top of the list of terror-sponsoring states, with much of that activity blamed on the IRGC and its Quds Force.
Past attempts led by Republican lawmakers to persuade the executive branch to designate the IRGC a foreign terrorist organization has been unsuccessful. Among opponents of one 2007 Senate initiative were then-Sens. Obama, Joe Biden and John Kerry. Sen. Clinton supported it.

McCain: Mattis understands Iran ‘very well’

Thursday’s event, billed as a briefing on the new administration and Iran policy options, also featured remarks by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) – one of four Senate Democrats who voted to oppose the JCPOA last year.

 
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., addresses the Organization of Iranian-American Communities-hosted event on Capitol Hill on Thursday, December 8, 2016.

McCain reminded the audience of Iran’s actions last January in capturing and parading U.S. sailors whose small patrol boats inadvertently entered Iran’s territorial waters in the Gulf.
He recalled his distress to see “American sailors, fighting men and women on their knees, with their hands clasped behind their neck. That is an act that I have not seen in many, many, many years.”
And then Secretary of State John Kerry, he said, had thanked the Iranian regime for releasing them.
“The action of our secretary of state was to thank the Iranians,” he said. “That picture, as you know, was all over the Middle East, of American servicemen and women being humiliated by Iranians.”
But, McCain continued, “we have a new administration. We’re going to have a secretary of defense [retired Marine Gen. James Mattis] who is an outstanding military officer.”
McCain said he has known Mattis for years, “and I can tell you, he understands Iran, he understands it very well.”

In his remarks, Menendez hailed the recent Senate passage in a 99-0 vote on legislation to extend the Iran Sanctions Act, an action which he said sent a clear message to Iran “that there will be consequences for violation of the agreement.”
The measure, which Tehran has bitterly condemned, is now awaiting the president’s signature.
The Capitol Hill event also heard a message from the leader of the exiled opposition group, National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Maryam Rajavi argued that combating radical Islam and terrorism in the region required taking on the regime in Tehran.
“There is no doubt that drying up the swamp of fundamentalism and extremism under the banner of Islam, either Shi’ite or Sunni, can only be made possible through confronting the Iranian regime, the godfather of fundamentalism and terrorism,” she said.
“In other words, fighting ISIS cannot be separated from confronting this regime. To the extent that the clerical regime is pushed back from the region the world will get that much closer to destroying ISIS.”