An ascendant New York lawmaker could provide an unlikely boost to parts of President Trump’s foreign policy in the Democratic-controlled House, Iran hawks believe.
Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is poised to take the chairman’s gavel from retiring Republican Ed Royce of California. While the new Democratic majority is threatening investigations into the Trump administration, Engel’s rise could help fortify one of the administration’s most controversial policies: the president’s crackdown on Iran in the wake of the withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal forged by then-President Barack Obama.
“I really believe that Iran is the most dangerous player in the region,” Engel said at an event hosted by The Israel Project last year, and some expect him to help find a bipartisan path on foreign policy with Trump.
“Congressman Engel has shown strong and thoughtful leadership on critical foreign affairs issues and, as exemplified by his hand-in-glove work with outgoing chairman Ed Royce, was a model for working in a bipartisan manner — so critical in what can be a polarized Congress,” Toby Dershowitz, senior vice president for government relations at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner. “That bipartisanship will be desperately needed if the U.S. is to continue having an impact addressing Iran’s malign activities, including its destabilizing presence in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon, its continued missile proliferation, its rearming of Hezbollah, and its serious human rights abuses at home and abroad.”
When Obama lead his party in a rapprochement with the pariah regime, Engel argued against the Iran deal. After Obama committed the United States to the nuclear deal, he believed that Trump should not withdraw from the pact, but instead enforce it strictly. His attitude, in either instance, remained anchored in the belief that Iran represents a unique threat in the Middle East.
That puts him at odds with many Democrats, although he was also at odds with the Trump administration after it said it would withdraw from the agreement but stop short of imposing maximum sanctions back on Iran.
“Whatever its flaws, withdrawing from the Iran deal was a mistake,” Engel said last week. “We do need to be tough on Iran, but we’ve given up the assurances that Iran will abide by the limits and strict monitoring of the nuclear agreement. At the same time, adversaries around the world may rightly wonder whether American sanctions should be taken seriously, or if they’re just tough talk.”
Still, that posture has Iran hawks optimistic about working with him, even in a “polarized Congress” led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and likely speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
The potential for cooperation isn’t just a matter of bipartisan temperament, as Engel made clear while seated next to Royce at the Israel Project’s 2017 event. “There’s not any difference in the way we think about this issue,” the New York Democrat said. “I could take his speech and read it. He could take mine and read it. We all agree with it. And, really, that’s the way foreign policy should be. It should be bipartisan, where possible.”
That doesn’t mean he’d be a pushover for the administration. “I won’t stand for delay and non-responsiveness to things that are clearly in our jurisdiction,” he told the Washington Post in an interview published Thursday.
Engel is also interested in investigating whether Trump’s business dealings have shaped his policy to Russia or other governments. “It’s a valid topic for us to look into,” Engel added. “There has been a concern about the motivations of the administration in terms of policies in different countries, and is it connected to Trump’s business interests.”
But even his skepticism of Russia foreshadows a hard line with respect to Iran and the 2015 nuclear deal.
“They’re all in it together,” Engel told the Israel Project in 2017. “Russia and Iran have collaborated, it’s my belief that they collaborated all during the negotiations on the JCPOA [nuclear deal] and I think that that’s — the old line of the axis of evil, I think this is the axis of evil today. And we have to confront it.”
