Pressure in Congress for new sanctions against Iran has built up to the point where even a presidential veto likely won’t stop it, as talks on limiting its nuclear program drag into yet another extension.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers, concerned that Tehran is stretching out the talks to advance its efforts to build a nuclear weapon, plans to move legislation imposing new sanctions after Congress returns in January. The effort may have enough support to hand President Obama his second major defeat on the issue.
“I’m going to be working as hard as I can to get a veto-proof majority in the Senate and the House,” Sen. Mark Kirk, lead co-sponsor of the legislation, told the Washington Examiner. “I’m confident that we’re going to get there.”
The Illinois Republican teamed up with Democrat Robert Menendez of New Jersey, outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to craft a bipartisan bill that was bottled up in the Senate by outgoing Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., at the Obama administration’s request. He said that will be the basis for new legislation in the 114th Congress.
Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who takes over as majority leader in January, has promised the bill would get a vote. Nearly all Republicans are expected to support it, and Kirk said he has received commitments from 17 Democrats to support the legislation “to make sure that we are as bipartisan as possible going forward.”
The Republican-controlled House is already onboard with tougher sanctions, having passed a similar package in July 2013. Support for the legislation remains strong, even among Democrats.
“We should work to pass tough sanctions now, and these sanctions should go into effect immediately,” said Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., a leading advocate for tougher sanctions on the Democratic side.
The administration opposes new sanctions and warns that Iran would see them as a breach of the six-month interim agreement signed in November 2013, which negotiators agreed Monday to extend for another seven months while a final deal is worked out.
“We continue to believe that adding on sanctions while negotiations are ongoing would be counterproductive,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday after the new extension was announced.
But that logic is lost on lawmakers, who fear the administration already has made too many concessions to Tehran and want to ensure Iran is required to come clean about past efforts to develop a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency has said it cannot verify that such research has stopped, and experts warn that no agreement would be viable without such proof.
“It means the Iranians have gotten what they needed most, which is time to work on their atomic bomb,” Kirk said of the latest extension, which also allows Iran to continue to receive $700 million a month in assets frozen under previous sanctions.
Their fears have been bolstered by reaction to the extension from Tehran, where officials hinted that negotiators from the “P5+1” group — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — had made concessions that brought the talks more in line with Iran’s goals of maintaining its ability to enrich uranium and the total elimination of international sanctions.
“The U.S. and the hegemonic European countries gathered to bring the Islamic Republic of Iran to its knees, but they failed and they cannot succeed in future either,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said Tuesday.
The last time Obama tangled with Congress over Iran sanctions in 2010, legislation passed both chambers overwhelmingly with veto-proof, bipartisan majorities. Though the administration initially opposed those sanctions, officials now claim credit for them having forced Iran to the negotiating table.
But Kirk and Menendez said more pressure is needed to keep Iran honest, and their push for new sanctions is likely to succeed over Obama’s objections.
“The cycle of negotiations, followed by an extension, coupled with sanctions relief for Iran has not succeeded,” Menendez said. “I continue to believe that the two-track approach of diplomacy and economic pressure that brought Iran to the negotiating table is also the best path forward to achieve a breakthrough.”
Kirk said what lawmakers want is for Iran to do what South Africa did in the 1990s — open the doors to the IAEA to verify once and for all that its nuclear weapons program has ended.
“If it’s good enough for Nelson Mandela, it’s good enough for Iran,” he said.
