GOP Ready To Block Nuclear Deal (Ezekiel 17)

 

GOP Leaders: Any Nuclear Deal With Iran Will Face Deep Opposition in Congress

By KRISTINA PETERSON

Republican leaders signaled Sunday that any final nuclear deal struck with Iran will face deep opposition in the GOP-controlled Congress.

For weeks, Republicans have called for President Barack Obama and his team of U.S. diplomats to walk away from negotiations aimed at curbing Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons. As top officials entered what they labeled a “decisive” phase of talks with Iran and five other global powers on Sunday, GOP leaders said they doubted a final deal would pass muster with most Republicans.
“It’s going to be a very hard sell — if it’s completed — in Congress,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said on Fox News Sunday. Mr. McConnell said he worried that any deal would still leave Iran capable of producing a nuclear weapon on relatively short notice.

“We already know that it’s going to leave Iran as a threshold nuclear state,” Mr. McConnell said. “It appears as if the administration’s approach to this was to reach whatever agreement the Iranians are willing to enter into.”

Mr. Obama has said repeatedly that he is willing to abandon the talks if the agreement under consideration won’t prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said the administration did not look likely to produce a deal that met the standards they had pledged to meet. In early April, Iran, the U.S. and five other global powers agreed to the broad parameters of a deal aimed at establishing strong controls and constraints on Iran’s nuclear program.

“From everything that’s leaked from these negotiations, the administration’s backed away from almost all of the guidelines that they set up for themselves,” Mr. Boehner said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation. “No deal is better than a bad deal.”

Some Democrats have said they are optimistic that the administration would only agree to an accord that would effectively monitor and enforce constraints on Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

“He fully realizes his legacy will not be the next 18 months and whether or not he gets a deal signed. It will be whether any deal, if there is one, endures and is effective and actually blocks Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview Friday.

Under legislation passed by Congress in May, Mr. Obama will not be able to ease any sanctions on Iran during a 60-day period designated for lawmakers to review the deal, beginning once the finalized deal’s full text has been submitted to Congress.

Lawmakers will have to decide whether to try to pass a resolution through both chambers disapproving or approving the deal, either of which would require at least 60 votes to clear the Senate. Congress could also opt not to vote on it at all.
 
Mr. McConnell said he thought a resolution disapproving the deal could get more than 60 votes in the Senate, but acknowledged that it may be harder for Republicans to find the veto-proof majority in the Senate that would be needed to stop the deal’s implementation. Republicans hold 54 of the Senate’s 100 seats.

For Democrats, “I know there’ll be a strong pull not to go against the president on something as important as this is to him,” Mr. McConnell said.