Senate Democrats rejected a personal call from Secretary of State John Kerry not to extend non-nuclear sanctions against Iran in a vote that nearly unanimously approved the measure Thursday and sent it to President Obama’s desk to sign.
Kerry had visited Capitol Hill Tuesday evening to caution Senate Democrats against renewing the Iran sanctions and urge them to prevent the Trump administration from unraveling the nuclear deal, according to a report in Al-Monitor.
Senate Democrats ignored that message and voted in lockstep to extend the sanctions, which were set to expire at the end of the year. The measure passed with near unanimous Senate support, 99-0. Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., was the only senator to abstain from voting.
“I’m glad that what we took up and considered and passed was a simple, clean 10-year extension of the [sanctions], and I think the vote showed enduring bipartisan interest in actively enforcing” the nuclear deal, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., the bill’s co-sponsor told reporters after the vote.
Coons said he didn’t attend Kerry’s meeting with Democrats in the Capitol Tuesday but a staffer relayed his message, one Coons has heard many times of over the last several years directly from the secretary of state.
The administration has argued that extending the sanctions would create challenges in U.S.-Iranian relations and that the extension wasn’t necessary because the executive branch already has the power to impose sanctions on Tehran at any time. If a significant breach in the nuclear deal or another provocation by the Iranians occurs, Kerry said Congress would act “within an hour” to pass whatever sanctions it deems necessary.
“Kerry’s message to Democrats was ‘please don’t,'” Coons said.
But that argument was all too familiar to Democrats, Coons said, because he had made it several times over the last few years as he and his State Department colleagues worked to forge the nuclear deal and implement it.
“He made that argument many times over the last year, but always with the request that if you’re going to do something, don’t do it right now,” Coons said. “That was the argument tin 2015 … that was the argument in early 2016.”
“This was as late as we could have possibly have extended it, and so I think many of us who have tried to work with the administration in sustaining and enforcing the [deal] viewed this as a responsible compromise — delaying until December an extension — but insisting on an extension.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, the ranking Democrat on a key Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, followed up with a forceful message of his own.
“Iran needs to know that if they violate the international nuclear agreement, U.S. sanctions will come down on them like a ton of bricks,” he said.
