The original Tuesday deadline in the Iran nuclear talks will pass without a framework for a final agreement nor congressional action on bills to impose new sanctions or require approval of a deal.
Secretary of State John Kerry doesn’t plan to return to Switzerland to resume the talks until Thursday, and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers who want to put the Obama administration on a shorter leash has agreed to wait until after the Passover-Easter recess ends in mid-April before considering any legislation.
The Republicans who control Congress and their Democratic allies had said they would move forward on both bills if there was no progress in the talks by Tuesday. That will not happen.
But waiting, rather than being seen as a defeat, appears to have made their case stronger by allowing time for bipartisan consultation. And President Obama’s refusal to deal with lawmakers on the issue has helped build the coalition.
Senators will vote in April on bipartisan legislation from Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the panel’s ranking Democrat, that would require Obama to submit any nuclear deal with Iran to Congress for approval, and tie sanctions relief to that process, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Monday.
President Obama has threatened to veto the bill, but Graham said he expects Congress to override the veto.
“We will not tolerate a deal that ends congressional sanctions without us looking at it,” Graham said in New York at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“I think in April you’re going to see the beginning of a bipartisan effort to make sure Congress is not dealt out of these negotiations.”
House lawmakers, meanwhile, sent a letter last week to Obama warning that they too expect to be asked to weigh in on any deal, though the letter stopped short of endorsing the Senate bill.
The March 20 letter was signed by a bipartisan majority of 367 House members, 77 more than needed to override a veto in that chamber.
Corker, who has been saying that the administration’s attitude toward cooperating with Congress on Iran has helped build support for his bill, repeated that assertion Sunday in an interview with CBS News.
“I wake up every day trying to do everything I can to move foreign policy ahead, to work with everyone. And I have never seen such resistance by an administration towards a responsible role for Congress,” he said.
“They have been pushing Congress away from this from day one.”
Among the actions Corker says has helped make the case for his bill is the fact that administration officials plan to seek U.N. Security Council approval of any nuclear deal even as they stiff-arm Congress. Officials say that’s because the Security Council must vote to lift its own sanctions against Iran for a deal to be implemented. But congressional sanctions on Iran are enacted into U.S. law, and lawmakers strongly object to the idea that Obama could remove them without their consent.
Graham said there would be a “violent” response that would break relations between the United Nations and Congress if the administration goes through with its plan.
“I don’t think that’s good for the country,” he said. “The last thing I want is to be put in a box where I have to take the U.N. on.”
