Secretary of State John Kerry is off to Europe and Saudi Arabia on Monday for a weeklong trip during which he will resume nuclear talks with Iran, just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes to Washington to lobby against a potential deal.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Thursday said Kerry would travel Monday to Geneva for a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council, and would meet Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in the nearby resort of Montreaux to resume talks on limiting Iran’s nuclear program.
Kerry will then travel to Riyadh to brief Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz on the talks and other issues, and attend a meeting of Gulf Cooperation Council ministers in London on March 6.
The White House had previously said Kerry would not be in town when Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress on Tuesday, but did not say where he would be.
Kerry and his international partners in the “P5+1” group — Britain, France, Germany, Russia, the U.S. and China — are under pressure to close with Tehran on the basic outlines of a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program by their self-imposed March 24 deadline. A November 2013 interim deal expires June 30, and officials in both Washington and Tehran have said they would not seek a further extension.
The administration has harshly criticized Boehner for inviting Netanyahu to speak, and many Democrats plan to boycott his speech. Kerry joined in the criticism on Wednesday, telling the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the Israeli leader “may have a judgment that just may not be correct here.”
But there’s widespread mistrust of the administration’s negotiating strategy in Congress, fueled by reports this week from Geneva that negotiators are working on a deal that may leave Iran a way to build a nuclear weapon. Support for legislation that would impose new sanctions on Iran is strong among lawmakers of both parties, who warned a visibly irritated Kerry in two days of hearings this week that they could move to pass it if they are not satisfied with the results of the talks.
“If that happens to be in the universe, that’s problematic,” Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., co-author of the sanctions bill, told Kerry on Tuesday, referring to the reported outlines of a possible deal.
“I told you that’s not true,” Kerry shot back.
On Thursday, Kerry lunched with Democratic senators to plead them not to move forward with sanctions.
While in Washington, Netanyahu also is scheduled to speak Monday morning at the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and it’s likely many of the Democrats boycotting his speech at the Capitol may attend.
