A top Senate Republican accused the Obama administration on Thursday of cutting a deal with Iran in that paves its path to a nuclear weapon, telling Secretary of State John Kerry: “You’ve been fleeced”. “People will be in there signing contracts, and then the leverage sort of shifts to them”, said Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
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Corker chided Kerry and other administration officials for their line of argument that the only alternative to the Iran deal would be more war in the Middle East, saying that the real alternative would be a better deal.
Kerry, who was joined at the hearing by Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, urged lawmakers to accept that the agreement came when Iran was already close to developing nuclear weapons.
Multiple Republican lawmakers complained anew that the State Department did not submit all the aspects of the Iran deal to Congress. One sore point in particular: missing documents detailing the so-called “side deals” between Iran and the worldwide Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog. “That’s a fantasy – plain and simple, and our own intelligence community will tell you that”.
By putting the onus on Congress to pass a bad deal, the senator said, the Obama administration had made Iran no longer a pariah.
“The fact is that Iran now has extensive experience with nuclear fuel cycle technology”.
But Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told reporters the kingdom has been reassured by Washington while consultations continue about the deal, which he said stipulates effective inspections, including of military sites, and the possibility of snap-back sanctions if Iran violates the agreement.
“Our negotiators got an bad lot, particularly on the nuclear front”, Cardin said at a hearing the committee held as Congress begins a 60-day period, which ends September 17, to approve of the deal, reject it or do nothing. They outline an arrangement in which Iran will account for previous military uses of its nuclear program.
The work that we’ve done with respect to sanctions now offers Iran a choice. But officials, including President Obama, repeatedly said and suggested that’s exactly what they wanted.
Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who has yet to say whether he will support the deal, did praise it for rolling back Iran’s nuclear program but anxious about what would happen when it expires in 15 years.
He was referring commercials aired by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee urging lawmakers to reject the deal.
European Union foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini, who helped to broker the agreement, will visit Riyadh on Monday and Tehran on Tuesday next week. Support from Democrats will be critical for the president to maintain his veto power, with Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress and nearly uniformly against the deal from the outset. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that a “better” deal could have restricted Iran more.
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He said under the deal, Iran would still be able to build long-range ballistic missiles “that know only one goal and that is for nuclear warfare” and would provide billions “to a regime that… directly threatens the interests of the United States and our allies”.
