Iran's not-yet-online research and development reactor near Arak would have to be
rebuilt under the nuclear agreement being negotiated.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will mark up S. 615 Tuesday. That's the Corker-Menendez bill—
the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015—that would give Congress 60 days to review any agreement with Iran to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. The bill bars the president from lifting sanctions during those 60 days. It would also give Congress the authority to approve or reject the agreement after the review is complete. President Obama has vowed to veto the bill, arguing that it could wreck the deal with Iran.
Both Democrats and Republicans have proposed numerous amendments to the bill. Any one of these could end chances for what Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the committee, hopes is a veto-proof approval on the Senate floor. He says he has all but a couple of the 67 votes need to achieve that. But some of those votes will be iffy if Republican amendments go too far. Which means Corker, who controls which amendments will get heard, has a tightrope to walk in hanging onto support for the bill.
For instance, there's Sen. Angus King, the independent from Maine, who is one of the bill's original sponsors. He told Martin Matishak that he's let Corker know that he'll only continue to support the bill if his colleagues on the committee deal with it "responsibly" and warned that “if this looks like this is just going to be used as a partisan issue, some way to embarrass the president, to deny him of foreign policy achievement, I'm out, man.”
“The important thing … is for everybody to remember what this deal is about. It's about a nuclear weapon, denying Iran a nuclear weapon. It's not about solving all the problems of the Middle East. It's not about solving all the problems of terrorism. It's this one single issue,” according to King, who sits on the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees.
He said if lawmakers “try to load it up with everything else, even though they may be desirable, something I might support, then I think we've lost the focus and we've lost our ability to achieve something very important.”
Among the Democratic amendments is one from Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire who wants to allow President Obama to temporarily suspend sanctions if Iran is making progress on its obligations under the agreement. Another would eliminate any requirement for the president to certify that Iran is not engaging in terrorism.
While those no doubt will stir sharp debate, there are at least two Republican-proposed amendments that would guarantee the bill wouldn't get 67 votes.
See what Republicans have in mind below the fold:
One of those amendments is GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio's. And it's a doozy. His would require Iran to recognize Israel before the nuclear agreement could be approved. Although that's something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sought, it is certain to peel away a few Democratic votes. And Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin seeks to require oversight of the bill similar to that for a treaty. Instead of just the Senate's advice and consent, however, his amendment would require a two-thirds vote in both houses to approve implementation of the Iran agreement.
According to the Obama administration, the nuclear deal with Iran is not a treaty, but an executive agreement, similar to the arrangement that facilitated the wind-down of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Executive agreements are deliberated between heads of state and are not subject to congressional approval.
“I think what’s really clear is that Republicans have to decide whether they’re going to stick to their guns and insist on provisions that are already in there, or go forward with Democratic support,” said [Dylan] Williams [ vice president of government affairs at J Street, a pro-Israel group] “Because they can’t have it both ways."
While these political battles continue, the technical team that is supposed to be working out the nitty-gritty details of the agreement by June 30
could well be delayed by the obvious differences in what Iran thinks the framework of the agreement is and the U.S. and other negotiators think it is:
Ever since the nuclear negotiators announced on April 2 in Switzerland that they’d hammered out a political framework, U.S and Iranian officials have been sparring over its terms. They’ve drawn different red lines and offered dueling fact sheets about the details that must be settled to produce a deal that confines Iran’s nuclear work to civilian purposes. [...]
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s ultimate authority, signaled the possibility of an extension in his comments on April 9, in which he also criticized U.S. officials’ descriptions of the framework.
The three-month window to wrap up negotiations “is not an unchangeable matter,” Khamenei said. “If this period increases, it’s not a problem at all.”
Perhaps not in Tehran when you're the boss. But a third extension of the talks would give the naysayers in Congress more ammunition in their opposition to any deal that doesn't require capitulation on issues that Iran would never accept.
And if that happens, then what?