Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker sounded optimistic Sunday that the U.S. would reach a preliminary deal in nuclear negotiations with Iran, but warned that Congress is concerned that it would be a bad deal.
“We’re very close to political agreement,” the Tennessee Republican said on CBS Sunday morning, noting that he’d spoken to Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden earlier in the week while Kerry was in talks in Switzerland.
“I think the concern has been from Day 1 that we keep moving from our initial position … towards Iran’s position,” Corker said. “And so there’s a concern that the administration cares more about making a deal versus the right deal.”
The Senate will have an important role in finalizing that deal, Corker said, before removing sanctions placed by Congress on Iran. He said that everyone involved would favor a deal that would prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
Corker acknowledged that the letter written earlier in the month by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and 46 other Republicans to the Iranian government, which warned that a presidential deal without congressional approval was subject to change, wasn’t “something that was productive.”
“What we cannot do is let drama take us off our course,” Corker said of the letter, which he did not sign.
But he attributed the drama to the Obama administration’s “unprecedented” resistance to the Senate being involved in the deal.
“If Congress were to embrace the deal with Iran, it has a much better chance of standing the test of time,” he said.
“Let’s not rush to a place where we end up with a deal that doesn’t stand the test of time and further destabilizes the region,” Corker warned the administration.
