Lawmakers already are listening to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s message about Iran, that Tehran cannot be trusted, even if the prime minister bows to pressure not to address a joint session of Congress in March.
House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation has been interpreted widely as a boost to President Obama’s efforts to block new sanctions legislation because it was seen as a partisan move to thwart the president.
“I think that such a presentation could send the wrong message in terms of giving diplomacy a chance,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said Wednesday, adding that she had conveyed that message to Netanyahu in a phone conversation.
But the legislation advanced Thursday with an 18-4 vote in the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, and even Democrats who want to delay a final vote still want a bill ready if it’s needed.
“The notion that the Iran sanctions effort can be stopped was killed by the American people at the ballot box when they elected a Republican Senate,” the bill’s co-author, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., told Bloomberg in an interview. “This is going to move forward in the Senate regardless of what the president’s feelings are on it.”
Citing Obama’s own prediction that there’s less than a 50-percent chance of a permanent deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program by the June 30 expiration of an interim agreement, most lawmakers of both parties say the United States needs to be ready with an alternative strategy that includes tougher sanctions.
Negotiators from the “P5+1” group — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — hope to have a framework for a permanent deal in place by March 24, but even congressional Democrats are skeptical that deadline will be met.
“The fact is that negotiators are now in their 18th month of talking,” said Sen Bob Menendez, D-N.J., co-author of the sanctions bill. “Iran is procrastinating because the longer the negotiations last, the further the P5+1 move in their direction.”
The skepticism of Iran’s intentions is fueled by Obama administration policies widely seen as empowering Iran — not only in the nuclear talks, but also elsewhere.
The administration has been willing to tolerate Iranian cheating on the interim deal to keep the talks going, while ignoring Tehran’s provocations in other areas, such as its proxy wars against Israel and Arab countries and legal moves against U.S. citizens, such as Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian.
“It is quite possible that, by the time Obama leaves office, no other country on earth will have gained quite so much as Iran,” top editor David Rothkopf wrote in Foreign Policy magazine.
Perhaps the largest concern is over Iran’s role in Syria, where it and Russia are the main international patrons of the regime of President Bashar Assad. The administration has put its strategy against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria at risk by refusing to confront Assad, a sign many observers in the region, including potential allies among Syria’s opposition, see as a bid to protect the nuclear talks by not angering Tehran.
Meanwhile, Iran has been trying to move into the Golan Heights on the Syrian side to open a new front against Israel, aided by the perception that the United States has ceded Syria to Iranian influence, said Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. That puts Israel in a position where it may have to respond, raising the risk of new conflict amid already strong concerns about Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
The move led to a flare-up when Israel killed an Iranian general and six fighters from the Lebanese Shiite extremist group Hezbollah in a Jan. 18 airstrike on the Golan. Hezbollah struck back Wednesday with a missile attack on the Lebanon-Israel border that killed two Israeli soldiers.
“I think this is a path that is ultimately going to lead to an escalation,” Badran said.
