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But Friday also marks two years since the conclusion of one of the most successful deals in modern diplomacy -- the negotiation of the Iran nuclear agreement. And this anniversary serves as a reminder of what the United States can achieve through diplomacy and engagement, when the president, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the secretary of energy work together with civil and foreign service officers who are on the front lines of diplomacy around the world.

I was at the State Department when the negotiations began and at the White House when the deal finally passed, and for the months following the negotiation, Washington was focused on a largely partisan battle over the final details of the deal. Still, there was skepticism from members of both parties about whether Iran would hold up their end of the bargain. And a bitter battle was waged by high-powered lobbying groups trying to kill the deal with additional sanctions. It had several near-death experiences.

No one is saying the Iran deal is perfect. Diplomatic negotiations rarely end with a feeling of perfection on either end. Diplomacy includes making concessions that move all sides toward our ultimate goal; in the case of the Iran deal we clearly would have preferred to get additional concessions from the Iranians about ballistic missile development and other activities, but in order to keep our coalition together we had to be focused and deliberate.

As we face an aggressive nuclear weapons state in North Korea today, we know exactly what the consequences are when diplomatic efforts fade away. No administration should invite this most serious threat to Americans and our allies and partners. Vigorous support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA (the Iran Nuclear Deal's official name) is the best way to fend off nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.

Politics should not be a driver of decisions on this issue, or on our foreign policy. The JCPOA provides a feasible path forward, for the Trump team, on one of the trickiest international challenges we face.

On this second anniversary of the deal, let us look ahead to where it can take us. In addition to the tangible, quantifiable advances in global secrity made possible by the deal -- the reductions in centrifuges, the limits on the amount of highly enriched uranium permitted to be held in Iran, and the intense inspections regime, for example -- the Iran deal provides opportunities. In particular, opportunities for US leadership in the world as we try to battle terrorism and seek a path forward for Syria without the potential threat of Iran pursuing nuclear weapons or the ensuing arms race in the Middle East. This is an area in which leaders from both parties have said they want to continue to lead the world. Remaining committed to the Iran deal is how we do that.

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Obama's gift to Trump: A lasting deal on Iran's nuclear ...

During a press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Thursday, President Trump fielded a question about the 2016 meeting between his son, Donald Trump Jr., and a Russian lawyer that has ensnared his administration in a new round of controversy.

Trump Jr. released emails this week showing a series of communications with a publicist promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton, that would ostensibly be provided by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Trump Jr. agreed to the meeting and hosted Veselnitskaya for a meeting with him, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016. Veselnitskaya allegedly provided no useful information, Trump Jr. said after the controversy erupted this week.

In Paris, Mr. Trump reacted to the meeting, saying he thought "the press made a very big deal over something that really a lot of people would do." He then seemed to blame the Obama administration for allowing Veselnitskaya into the country.

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President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron took questions from reporters after meeting together in Paris Thursday. Trump elabora...

"Now, the lawyer that went to the meeting, I see that she was in the halls of Congress also," Mr. Trump said. "Somebody said that her visa or her passport to come into the country was approved by [former] Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch. Now, maybe that's wrong. I just heard that a little while ago. I was surprised to hear that."

A spokesman for Lynch, who served as attorney general under President Obama, told CBS News Lynch "does not have any personal knowledge of Ms. Veselnitskaya's travel." The spokesman noted "the State Department issues visas, and the Department of Homeland Security oversees entry to the United States at airports."

Mr. Trump appeared to be referencing reports about Veselnitskaya's efforts to enter the U.S. to represent a Russian client in a New York lawsuit in late 2015. Denied a visa, a frustrated Veselnitskaya was eventually able to secure permission from the Justice Department to enter the country outside the normal visa process under a designation known as "immigration parole," court records show.

In October 2015, Veselnitskaya represented Denis Katsyv in a money laundering suit against his company, Prevezon. The U.S. government had accused Katsyv of using $230 million in stolen funds to buy real estate. Veselnitskaya's application for a visa to travel to the U.S. to work on the case was denied, she said in a later court filing.

Instead, the Department of Justice granted Katsyv and Veselnitskaya immigration parole. In later arguments before a federal judge, a government attorney described immigration parole as "a discretionary act that the statute allows the attorney general to do in extraordinary circumstances."

In this photo taken on Tue., Nov. 8, 2016, Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya speaks to a journalist in Moscow, Russia.

AP

The U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York granted Veselnitskaya immigration parole in October 2015, setting an expiration date of January 7, 2016, DOJ attorneys later told the court. On January 4, Veselnitskaya's request to extend her parole was denied, according to a declaration filed in U.S. District Court on January 5. In that filing, Veselnitskaya asked the judge to allow her to remain in the U.S. to defend Katsyv. She added she had "been harassed by the Government despite being paroled into the United States" when trying to return from a trip to London that November.

On January 6, 2016, Judge Thomas P. Griesa of the Southern District of New York heard arguments over Veselnitskaya's request to remain in the U.S. According to a court transcript, he asked the government's attorney, Paul Monteleoni, if the Justice Department would agree to grant a one-week extension of Veselnitskaya's immigration parole status. Monteleoni replied that he did not "have the final say but I will certainly pass the request along to those in the government who do, and I think for an extension of that length I'm optimistic."

It is unclear under whether the DOJ granted Veselnitskaya another extension to continue her work in the U.S., but records of the case make no further mention of an extension being granted beyond January 14, 2016.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to questions about whether Veselnitskaya was granted immigration parole after January 14 and, if not, how she was permitted entrance to the U.S. for the meeting in Trump Tower.

Nearly six months later, on June 7, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. received an email from publicist Rob Goldstone that said, "The Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow for this Thursday," June 9, when Veselnitskaya met with Trump Jr., Manafort and Kushner in Trump Tower. Requesting the meeting be pushed back, Goldstone mentioned that "the Russian attorney" would be in court until 3 p.m. on June 9.

The emails suggest Veselnitskaya, who does not speak or read English, returned to Moscow sometime after her immigration parole status expired in January.

Days after the meeting in Trump Tower, Veselnitskaya traveled to Washington, where she attended a screening of a film decrying the Magnitsky Act, the 2012 law allowing sanctions against individual Russians suspected of human rights abuses. Veselnitskaya has been one of the foremost Russian nationals lobbying for repeal of the bill, named after Sergei Magnitsky, who was allegedly killed in custody after exposing the corruption at the heart of the Katsyv case.

The federal government settled its case against Katsyv four months after Mr. Trump entered office.

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The Trump administration is accelerating plans to jettison hundreds of regulations spanning the entire government, but the process is off to a slow start and risks failing to match the White House's lofty goals for deregulation.

On Thursday, the White House's Office of Management and Budget is planning to release a list of rules it plans to weaken or eliminate. The list will note that 469 proposals that were in the works during the Obama administration have been scrapped, and another 391 have been slowed. The administration is not releasing a full list of which regulations it's targeting until Thursday, but they willrun the gamut from significant policy measures to minorprocedural measures, saidNeomi Rao, who heads the White Houses Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Proposals that are being scrapped are expected to be listed as inactive in the White House release.

Its really the beginning of fundamental regulatory reform and where were going with regulations, Rao said.

OIRA is essentially the regulatory clearinghouse for the White House, with any new regulation coming to it first before it can be issued.

Thelist will bepart of a semiannual report onthe entire governments regulatory agenda. Thursday will be the first edition of the report issued under President Trump.

[Meet Neomi Rao: Trump's rules czar]

Trump has said federal regulations are harming businesses and making it hard for them to hire and grow, and his advisers say cutting back on rules is a central part of his agenda. But some of the rules that he is moving to eliminate are ones the Obama administration pursued to boost consumer and environmental protection.

Trump has promised to jettison 80 percent of all federal regulations, a vow that likely means eliminating many thousands of existing policies across the federal government.

The White Houses list of proposed steps to deregulate will fall far short of that, but Rao said the process is expected to intensify even further later this year. Rao said federal agencies are more accustomed to adding new regulations and not stripping regulations away, and this new process is taking time to adopt.

She said she has asked OMB officials how many federal regulations there are and was told that it was impossible to get a precise number. Many regulations are required by federal law and cant be unilaterally removed by the White House or regulators, but Trump and Congress have worked together to removed a number of regulations so far through a process authorized by the Congressional Review Act.

These deregulation moves by Congress and Trump, among other things, rolled back a gun safety rule and made it harder for the Federal Communications Commission to block Internet service providers from selling customer data.

Still, even after the release of the updated list on Thursday, it will be difficult to ascertain all of the regulations that are being pulled back. The updated agenda will have 1,732 regulations that are in the works either short term or long term a 20 percent reduction from the end of the Obama administration. But some of those regulatory moves could be efforts to weaken existing rules.

Part of this is a reflection that the process is much more complicated to eliminate rules than Trump suggested it would be during his presidential campaign, but he seems to be changing the process, albeit slowly.

It's not easy, said Ted Gayer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. It's not nearly as easy as they thought coming in. I think Trump and his senior advisers thought, 'Well, hell, well just delete some regulations.' It's not that easy. They are grasping and learning the process by which they can gum up regulations.

Rao joined the White House from George Mason University, where she was a law professor who has called for abolishing the independence of federal agencies and subjecting regulations to White House review.

Trump has called for agencies to eliminate two regulations for every new one they plan to propose, but so far the agencies have far outpaced this standard. An OMB official said that in the past five months, agencies have sought to eliminate about 18 rules for every new one.

OMB provided a small list of regulations that the White House is moving to rewrite or eliminate. They include the Bureau of Land Managements plan to repeal a 2015 rule that regulates hydraulic fracturing and an Environmental Protection Agency plan to regulate oil and gas development in parts of Utah.

Other deregulatory steps they plan to take include streamlining the Labor Departments approval process for new apprenticeship programs and making it easier for rail companies to use different kinds of equipment as long as they meetpublic safety rules.

Trump has also said the federal government should do more to streamline the permitting process for development, as he believes this is causing big delays in construction and building.

Rao said they will put out a more comprehensive list of regulations they are looking to eliminate in a few months as they expect to pick up steam. Getting rid of rules, or weakening rules, must follow legal procedures that takes time.

You are going to see a rollback of regulations, Rao said. What the magnitude is Im not sure what that percentage is. Its pretty hard to say.

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Trump administration to reveal which Obama-era rules its ...

Samantha Power / Getty Images

BY: Adam Kredo July 19, 2017 2:45 pm

Former United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power's involvement in the unmasking by former Obama administration officials of sensitive national security information is raising red flags over what insiders view was an attempt by the former administration to undermine President Donald Trump and key figures on his team, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the situation.

Power appears to be central to efforts by top Obama administration officials to identify individuals named in classified intelligence community reports related to Trump and his presidential transition team, according to multiple sources.

The names of Trump allies in the raw intelligence reports were leaked to the press in what many in Congress and the current administration claim is an attempt by Obama allies and former officials to damage the White House.

The House Intelligence Committee, which is spearheading the investigation into these efforts, has issued subpoenas for Power and other top Obama administration figures, including former national security adviser Susan Rice, as part of congressional efforts to determine the source of these leaks.

Power's role in this unmasking effort is believed to be particularly questionable given her position as the U.N. ambassador, a post that does not typically require such sensitive unmasking activities, according to former U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the matter.

"Unmasking is not a regular occurrenceabsolutely not a weekly habit. It is rare, even at the National Security Council, and ought to be rarer still for a U.N. ambassador," according to one former senior U.S. official who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.

"It might be defended when the communication in question relates directly to U.N. business, for example an important Security Council vote," explained the former official, who would only discuss the matter on background. "Sometimes it might be done out of other motives than national security, such as sheer curiosity or to defend a bureaucratic position. Or just plain politics."

The Intelligence Committee's focus of Power and other key Obama officials is a prime example of the Obama administration's efforts to spy on those close to Trump, according to sources familiar with the ongoing investigation.

"The subpoena for Power suggests just how pervasive the Obama administration's spying on Americans actually was," said oneveteran GOP political operative who has been briefed on the matter by senior Congressional intelligence officials."The U.N. ambassador has absolutely no business calling for the quantity and quality of the intelligence that Power seems to have been asking for."

The source questioned why Power would need to uncover such classified intelligence information in her role at the U.N.

"That's just not the sort of thing that she should have been concerned about, unless she was playing the role of political operative with the help of the intelligence community," the source said. "It gives away what was actually going on: the Obama administration was operating in a pervasive culture of impunity and using the intelligence community against their political opponents."

Rice was scheduled to speak to House Intelligence Committee this week, but the meeting wasreportedlypostponed. Some sources speculated this could be a delaying tactic by Rice aimed at pushing the testimony back until after Congress's summer recess.

Leading members of Congress have begun pushing for the Intelligence Committee and other oversight bodies to investigate former Obama administration officials who they believe are responsible for the leaks.

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.), a member of the House Oversight Committee and chair of its National Security Subcommittee, told the Free Beacon last week that these leaks appear to have come from former senior officials, potentially including Ben Rhodes, the Obama national security adviser responsible for creating what he described as an in-house "echo chamber" meant to mislead the public and Congress about the landmark Iran nuclear deal.

"I think Congress and some members on the Intelligence Committee can call Ben Rhodes to testify," DeSantis said. "He may be able to invoke executive privilege from when Obama was president, but he definitely can't do that in any interactions he's had since then."

DeSantis identified Rhodes and other senior Obama administration officials as being "involved with feeding journalists some of these [leaks]. I believe he's in touch with people on the National Security Council. It would be absolutely legitimate as part of leak investigation to bring him in and put him under oath, and I would absolutely support doing that."

Senior Trump administration officials also have decried the leaks, which have expanded to operational information and are now impeding U.S. national security operations.

The anonymous sources for these articles "are obviously the same Obama holdovers who constantly leak classified information" to various newspapers, one senior administration official told the Free Beacon earlier this month.

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Fmr. U.N. Amb. Power Emerges As Central Figure In Obama ...

In a widely-circulated video from the 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain calls for respect for his then-opponent and eventual victor, President Barack Obama.

A woman came up to McCain at a rally and said, "I can't trust Obama. I have read about him, and he's not, he's not he's an Arab." Her comment prompted McCain to immediately shake his head and take the microphone from her.

"No ma'am," McCain said. "He's a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about."

McCain continued to defend Obama during the event even as his supporters voiced their surprise in the background.

"He is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as Pf resident," McCain said. "If I didn't think I'd be one heck of a better President I wouldn't be running, and that's the point. I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments, I will respect him. I want everyone to be respectful, and let's make sure we are. Because that's the way politics should be conducted in America."

McCain was recently diagnosed with a form of brain cancer , it was announced Wednesday. Obama joined other politicians in tweeting his support for McCain, tweeting that "John McCain is an American hero & one of the bravest fighters I've ever known. Cancer doesn't know what it's up against. Give it hell, John."

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Watch John McCain Strongly Defend Barack Obama During the 2008 Campaign - TIME