Iran sanctionsBoomerang: Democrats say they would delay vote on Iran sanctions bill
Senator Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) announced during a Senate hearing yesterday (Tuesday) that he and other Senate Democrats would not support bringing the sanctions bill he cosponsored with Senator Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) to the floor until at least 24 March. Menendez has led a small group of Democrats who were critical of the administration’s handling of the talks with Iran over the latter’s nuclear program talks. The bi-partisan approach to the sanctions issue collapsed in the face of what Democrats considered to be a clumsy politicization of the issue by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer. Dermer suggested to Boehner the idea of inviting Netanyahu to speak in front of Congress to criticize the administration’s policy. Netanyahu is lagging in the polls behind the center-left camp in the 17 March parliamentary elections in Israel, and Dermer, one of Netanyahu’s closest political advisers, believed the speech would boost Netanyahu’s standing in Israel. The process of the invitation was not less problematic than the invitation itself: In an unprecedented break with protocol, Boehner and Dermer did not bother to consult with, or even inform, the White House or the Department of State that they were arranging for a foreign head of state to speak before Congress.
Senator Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) announced during a Senate hearing yesterday (Tuesday) that he and other Senate Democrats would not support bringing the sanctions bill he cosponsored with Senator Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) to the floor until at least 24 March.
Menendez has led a small group of Democrats who were critical of the administration’s handling of the talks with Iran over the latter’s nuclear program. The harsh sanctions imposed on Iran over the years are still in place: the only exchange so far between Iran and the P5+1 group negotiating with it has been for Iran to dilute its stock of 20 percent enriched uranium and allow greater access by IAEA inspectors to its nuclear facilities in exchange for the United States unfreezing some of the Iranian funds kept in U.S. banks.
The bill authored by Kirk and Menendez detailed the even harsher sanctions which would be imposed on Iran, in addition to the sanctions currently in place, in the event the negotiations with Iran failed.
President Obama and the leaders of the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the Security Council plus the EU) argued that passing such legislation now, before the talks have concluded, would show bad faith on the part of the United States, and would likely scuttle the talks.
The other members of the group negotiating with Iran said the bill, if passed, would fracture the group, destroy its unity, and would lead to the three results the bill’s authors say they are trying to prevent: The United States would be blamed for the collapse of the negotiations; the sanctions regime will weaken, rather than be strengthened; and Iran will embark on a crash program to develop a nuclear arsenal.
At that point, there will be only two options left on the table: accept a nuclear-armed Iran, or launch a military campaign against it to destroy its nuclear facilities.
Obama argued that since everybody is already viewing Iran with suspicion, getting an additional-sanctions bill through Congress would take a day or two, so if the talks with Iran ended in failure, new sanctions legislation would follow immediately.
Still, most GOP senators and a handful of Democrats thought it would be a good idea to pass such a bill now, letting the Iranian know in advance what was in store for them if the talks failed.
