President Obama’s insistence that opponents of the Iran nuclear deal haven’t offered a credible alternative is getting a direct challenge from his own party’s leading skeptic.
Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey on Tuesday offered a detailed proposal for sending the deal back to the bargaining table in a speech in which he also pushed back against the president’s oft-repeated contention that opponents of the agreement are choosing war.
“The president and Secretary [of State John] Kerry have repeatedly said that the choice is between this agreement or war. I reject that proposition,” Menendez said in a speech at Seton Hall University.
He also pushed back against the administration’s argument that the international sanctions regime would collapse if Congress demands the deal be renegotiated.
“They, and the businesses from their countries, and elsewhere, will truly care more about their ability to do business in a U.S. economy of $17 trillion than an Iranian economy of $415 billion,” he said, referring to the other members of the P5+1 group: Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China.
Menendez’s alternative draws heavily on detailed critiques of the agreement signed in Vienna on July 14 and would leave in place a November 2013 interim agreement that has limited Iran’s nuclear advancement in exchange for limited relief from international sanctions.
It includes:
• An extension of the deal beyond the negotiated 10-year expiration date to at least 20 years. Many critics of the deal consider this to be the single biggest concern. Under the current agreement, the limits on Iran’s nuclear program begin to expire after 10 years, with the ability to increase the number and sophistication of centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
• A ban on research and development of advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium. Though the current deal would let Iran operate only the oldest and simplest centrifuges to enrich uranium, the continuation of research and development also allowed has raised concerns that the deal “industrializes the program of the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” as Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., wrote Monday in a Washington Post op-ed.
• Closure of the once-secret research facility at Fordow. The facility at Fordow is buried in a mountain, raising concerns that it could resist any attempt to attack it if Iran cheats. The nuclear agreement allows Iran to keep the facility and use it for enrichment activities, but not for uranium — a concession by the administration, which has previously said the facility must be closed.
• A complete accounting of Iran’s past nuclear weapons work. The details of how Iran will address concerns by the International Atomic Energy Agency over past work are contained in a side agreement with the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, which the agency will not allow U.S. lawmakers to see. Menendez has been among the members of Congress who have loudly objected to being shut out of what they suspect is a way to allow the deal to be implemented without Iran’s full compliance. “It would seem to me that what we are doing is sweeping this critical issue under the rug,” he said Tuesday.
Like his Democratic colleague Chuck Schumer of New York, Menendez also called for the Obama administration to fix another issue many skeptics have raised: The deal does not address any of Iran’s other behaviors that threaten the interests of the U.S. and its allies.
“We must send a message to Iran that neither their regional behavior nor nuclear ambitions are permissible. If we push back regionally, they will be less likely to test the limits of our tolerance towards any violation of a nuclear agreement,” he said.
