“Let me underscore: the alternative to the deal that we have reached is not some kind of unicorn fantasy that contemplates Iran’s complete capitulation”, Kerry warned before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
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Asked about the statement, a senior administration official emailed JTA a link to the agreement with all five of its annexes. The unity among other nations involved in the discussions would dissolve if the United States tried to reopen the talks, Burns said, and some countries would probably go ahead and lift their trade, energy and financial sanctions against Iran.
Three Cabinet secretaries continued Tuesday their energetic defense of the nuclear pact with Iran before the United States Congress, with guarantees that the monitoring and verification of Iranian installations will have no expiration date and that the economy of the Middle Eastern country will take years to recover.
The most important consideration of any agreement is providing for the long-term security of the U.S. and our allies in the region by preventing Iran from making progress on producing a nuclear weapon.
Obama, in a conference call Thursday with supporters of his Organizing for Action nonprofit, said opponents were spending $20 million in television ads attacking the deal.
Their statements come after multiple White House meetings this week between Obama and House Democrats, intended to counter an intense lobbying effort by AIPAC, which is behind a multimillion-dollar ad campaign. There are only technical documents that are standard practice and not released publicly.
“You said under no circumstances should we relieve the pressure on Iran on this issue, so was it your military recommendation that we not agree to the lifting of those sanctions?” she said.
If Congress rejects the deal, the US “still can drive some degree of sanctions”, Stavridis said. It requires two-thirds approval in both the House and Senate to override the veto.
Confidential agreements between Iran and the global Atomic Energy Agency, which will inspect Iran’s nuclear facilities, emerged as a key point of contention with Republicans at a hearing Wednesday of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that Obama was not misrepresenting the situation.
“That is absolutely astounding”, McCain said.
“We are aware of what the basics of it are”, Kerry testified, adding that it “is not shared with the world, but we do get briefed on it”.
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Those concerns and others “sent a signal to me and others that we’re not really that serious about carrying this out in a stringent way”, the Chattanooga Republican said. But Secretary Carter also said Iran was on par with the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or ISIL. He also noted that while Israel has been vocal in its criticism of the agreement, the king of Saudi Arabia expressed support for the deal during Carter’s recent trip to the Middle East. This is one of the administration’s arguments for supporting the deal, in fact. Countering that Iran had funded terrorist organizations even with strict sanctions in place, members of the administration said walking away from the deal would not guarantee the money held in foreign banks and owed to Iran would stay there.
