Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., proposed legislation on Thursday to block U.S. purchases of Iran’s heavy water, and warned that President Obama’s decision to buy the material encourages future breaches of the Iran nuclear agreement by subsidizing Iran’s nuclear program.
“President Obama is acting outside the requirements of the nuclear deal — forcing American taxpayers to support Iran’s nuclear program,” the Kansas Republican, who sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a Friday statement to the Washington Examiner. “By purchasing heavy water produced in Iran for use at a U.S. national laboratory, President Obama is encouraging future Iranian breaches.”
Heavy water is an essential ingredient for producing plutonium in a nuclear weapon, and Pompeo’s bill was proposed after House and Senate Republicans tried to attach similar language killing Iran’s sale to the U.S. to other must-pass legislation. But Democrats have blocked all such attempts, and President Obama’s team says they won’t be making any more purchases.
But Pompeo said the $8.6 million purchase already goes too far.
“Sending millions of dollars, which is a substantial amount of the Department of Energy’s budget for this program, to the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism defies logic and leaves our country less safe,” Pompeo said.
The legislation would block the pending purchase if the bill passed into law before the sale was completed, but that’s not going to happen. Senate Democrats have blocked consideration of the Energy and Water funding bill because Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has promised to offer an amendment to the legislation that would target the deal.
On the House side, Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., tried to add a legislative response to the National Defense Authorization Act that passed out of the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday. But a House Republican aide said “that was squashed” by GOP leadership due to the expectation that Democrats would kill the defense package if it were included.
“There was a time when someone would have thought that a Democrat threat to kill the defense bill was just an empty threat,” Franks told the Examiner on Friday while discussing his decision to withdraw the amendment. “Unfortunately, Barack Obama has demonstrated a willingness to sell out the country and its national security for temporary political gain, on so many occasions, that I no longer doubt his willingness to continue to do that.”
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., justified blocking the Energy and Water appropriations package by saying that Cotton planned to file a “poison pill” rider that would provoke a presidential veto. “Democrats have been eager to pursue appropriations bills and have been clear that preventing poison pills is Republicans’ end of the bargain,” Reid said Wednesday.
Cotton believes he would get Democratic votes in favor of the amendment blocking the heavy water sale, so much so that he said the amendment could be set at a 60-vote threshold and voted on “without a recorded vote” that would show who supported or opposed the proposal.
“If President Obama intends to make future purchases of Iranian heavy water that will subsidize Iran’s nuclear industry, then he should say so,” Cotton said in reply to Reid. “His own Secretary of Energy has said there will be no more purchases. But the vehemence with which the White House is opposing my amendment raises the question of whether President Obama is being straight with the American people.”
Pompeo and Franks might try to use the House version of the energy appropriations legislation as another vehicle for passing the heavy water purchase ban, despite the ongoing fight in the Senate. That appropriations bill is expected to receive a vote in May.
