The Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran.
Burgess Everett and Manu Raju
report that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has chosen to delay a vote on the
Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 that he had slated for next Tuesday:
He informed the Senate Republican Conference of the decision on Thursday afternoon following Senate Democrats’ decision to vote against advancing the bill before March 24.
“It is clear that Senate Democrats will filibuster their own bill—a bill they rushed to introduce before the White House cut a deal with Iran. So, instead, the Senate will turn next to the anti-human-trafficking legislation while Democrats decide whether or not they believe they and Congress as a whole should be able to review and vote on any deal the President cuts with the leaders of Iran,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell.
Wait a minute. It was not the five Democratic sponsors of the bill who were rushing it. The bill, which would require congressional approval of any deal struck between the United States, five other nations and Iran over development of its nuclear program, was introduced by Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee on Friday. He said then that he wanted to move it out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in time for a floor vote next week.
Just hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an unprecedented speech criticizing terms of the deal to a joint session of Congress Tuesday, McConnell announced the bill would be voted on next week. Soon thereafter, Sens. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Bob Menendez of New Jersey, two of the bill's Democratic sponsors, raised objections to holding a vote before the Foreign Relations Committee had held hearings and before the March 31 deadline the United States has set for the deal to be completed. Soon, the other three Democratic sponsors joined those two and said they could no longer support an accelerated consideration of the bill. Subsequently, they threatened to filibuster it if it came to the Senate floor before committee hearings are held.
While it's certainly fair to call this a bipartisan bill—six Republicans, five Democrats and one independent are co-sponsors—it was retooled from a bill introduced last July by Corker. That one got zero Democratic sponsors at a time when the Senate had a Democratic majority.
President Obama has vowed a veto. Critics say it could, especially if passed before the March 31 deadline, wreck the negotiations seeking to ensure Iran's nuclear program is peaceful—which Tehran has claimed has been the case since 2002. It would also remove economic sanctions being imposed on the regime because officials in the United States and other nations involved in the negotiations say Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons or at least the capability to quickly build some if it decides to do so.