A Senate bill sponsored by Senator Robert Menendez, NJ, would impose tougher sanctions on Iran, despite dire warnings from the White House, Iranian leaders, ten Democratic committee chairs and a host of liberal groups. It would sink a delicate nuclear agreement already in place, an agreement that prompted Tehran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for some relief from economic sanctions for a period of six months.

With 15 Democrats joining perhaps all Senate Republicans, the Senate bill takes a hard line in levying new sanctions on Iran unless the country’s leaders agree to abandon all uranium enrichment. While some call it an absurd stance, John Kerry, present Secretary of State, had in the past joined the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in saying that Iran has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

Earlier this month, Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, said that if the Senate moved forward with its bill, the current nuclear deal would be dead. A senior Obama administration official said that the Senate’s action makes it “far more likely that we’ll be left only with a military option” regarding Iran, which is perhaps a bit of fear-driven hyperbole, but does highlight the stakes involved.

A Disingenuous statement by Robert Menendez, “Current sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table and a credible threat of future sanctions will require Iran to cooperate and act in good faith at the negotiating table,” fails to mention that current sanctions and a new Iranian leadership already got us a temporary precarious agreement which he and his showcasing Democrats are threatening.

Such a stance is incredibly jingoistic, shortsighted, ham-fisted, demagogic, divisive, ill-advised and any other number of adjectives you might come up with. It doesn’t reach the arrogance, illegality, if not the stupidity, of selling arms to Iran, but it does highlight part of our own behavioral reasons behind decades of vitriol between the US and Iran, the other part being a bellicose stance by Iran.

But bellicose certainly described John McCain’s “Bomb Iran” song (Bomb Iran) in 2008 when he was running for president against Barack Obama, sentiments still repeated by him and joined-at-the-hip Lindsay Graham. That kind of demagoguery is still around among conservatives – and some Dems, it seems — and throws kerosene on the more incendiary relations dredged up from the past.

We have a real chance to turn the corner toward more peaceful relations with Iran and at the same time have some negotiating impacts on Iran’s terrorist activities in other Mid-Eastern nations, like Syria, Iraq and other potential trouble spots. Gutting the current peace effort would set us back not only with our peace efforts with Iran but with the savagery and death in many trouble spots in the Middle East.

The tenor of conservative discussions always seems to orient toward war and building up our military weapons. We can help millions of Iranian consumers who suffer under current sanctions and perhaps take the money we spend for munitions and apply it to American needs, a prospect that could favor our own recovery and induce opportunities for more Americans, not to speak of the investments in infrastructure, jobs, technology and education our country so sorely needs.

There might even be a bi-partisan effort to achieve such an investment if Republicans have fewer targets to cite in beating the drums of war, and of course we have Democrats as well who seem to see an opportunity to further their political career by attacking a last-term Democratic president and appearing maverick-like to their constituents – just like John McCain.

 I took the liberty of listing them below.

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