Republicans and many Democrats were already skeptical of a long-awaited nuclear agreement with Iran when they got word last week that the accord included two “side deals” that had not been seen by anyone in Congress.
The news has left Republicans more determined than ever to block the agreement, formally knows as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and has given undecided lawmakers more reason to doubt the accord.
Congress has begun a 60 day review period, after which they will vote on whether to approve or disapprove of the nuclear deal.
“Unless Congress gets the content of these agreements,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. said during an interview on MSNBC last week, “I don’t see how anyone in Congress can vote for this deal because it is based on verification and inspection, and without that information I don’t see how we can trust the government of Iran.”
The deals were first exposed by Cotton and Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who learned about them during a meeting with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna earlier this month.
They fall outside of the overall agreement, which lifts sanctions against Iran in exchange for the Islamic republic reducing its capacity to produce a nuclear weapon.
According to Cotton, the IAEA told the lawmakers that they had secured additional agreements with Iran, separate from nuclear deal, that would govern inspections of Iran’s secretive Parchin Military Complex, which has been suspected of producing both long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. According to Cotton and Pompeo, Iran also worked out an agreement with the IAEA on “outstanding questions on past weaponizing work.”
The United States will not be permitted to review the side deals.
Republican lawmakers have accused the Obama administration of obscuring the side deals form Congress, while GOP leaders in the House and Senate have demanded details of the arrangement in a joint letter to the Obama administration.
“Failure to produce these two side agreements leaves Congress blind on critical information regarding Iran’s potential path to being a nuclear power and will have detrimental consequences for the ability of members to assess the JCPOA,” they wrote.
The side deals were a dominant topic in closed-door briefings about the nuclear agreement held on Capitol Hill last week. Secretary of State John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz met privately with lawmakers in the House and Senate and told them they had not reviewed the side deals.
“I think [Kerry’s] gotten preliminary briefings on them but he certainly hasn’t read them yet,” Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla., said after the meeting.
But National Security Advisor Susan Rice said the administration is aware of them, and that Congress will receive the details.
“These documents are not public, but nonetheless, we have been briefed on those documents, we know their contents, we’re satisfied with them and we will share the contents of those briefings in full in a classified session with the Congress,” Rice told reporters last week. “So there’s nothing in that regard that we know that they won’t know.”
Congress won’t consider the nuclear deal until September, giving lawmakers plenty of time to hear from constituents, who according to polls, are mixed on whether they back the agreement.
Justin Logan, director of foreign policy studies for the libertarian Cato institute, said the side deals will not be a major sticking point because they “are not out of the ordinary,” when it comes to nuclear agreements.
“I think very, very few senators are going to be persuaded on the particular points of the deal,” Logan told the Washington Examiner. “Everyone on the Hill is grasping for talking points that ratify their priors or the conclusion they want to reach.”
