Confronting the efforts of the administration of US President Joe Biden To revive the Iran nuclear deal Growing suspicion in Congress on the part of both Democrats and Republicans.
Lawmakers from both parties say they have not been briefed on what the new agreement with Iran might look like, and they fear it might be much weaker than the deal struck by former President Barack Obama in 2015 because “the United States has lost time and influence,” according to a report. The American newspaper “The Hill”.
The report also made clear that there are also doubts regarding whether the time is right to negotiate a new agreement while the United States’ relations with Russia and China are at their lowest levels, both of which are signatories to the nuclear deal.
There are also fears that the new deal will end up directing billions of dollars to Russia because it will allow Moscow to continue its nuclear energy activities with Iran.
Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, the chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he did not know enough regarding the details of the emerging deal to say whether it would be strong enough to support it.
Democratic Senator Bob Menendez
Menendez was one of four Democrats who voted once morest the first agreement in 2015, along with Senator Ben Cardin, Senator Joe Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer.
“There was a little bit of insight into how things would go,” Menendez told The Hill. “But there’s no bigger view of the picture. And I don’t know what the deal is.”
He continued, “It is difficult to judge whether Iran will actually retreat from its nuclear program, and if it will finally stop its efforts to develop nuclear weapons and allow the International Atomic Energy Agency access to sites that it demands inspection.”
He considered that “the deal should include all of these things. In addition to restricting Iran’s missile programMenendez also stressed that if Iran were only asked to delay the development of its nuclear weapons program, the deal with it would likely not be “good enough.”
Ben Cardin, the second-largest Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee, said former US President Donald Trump made a mistake by withdrawing from the Iran deal four years ago.
Senator Ben Cardin
He acknowledged that deteriorating relations with Russia and China posed obstacles to negotiating a new deal and that it might be best to wait in the hope of forging a stronger deal at a later date.
The senator said that Russia’s “pariah” status in the international community “changes the dynamics of the talks,” considering that waiting before renegotiating the deal “may be the best strategy.”
“I’m not necessarily in favor of rushing to an agreement, and I still think we should have a longer agreement,” he said, referring to the terms of the 2015 deal that demanded Iran reduce its centrifuges for only 10 years.
During a phone call last weekend from a group of Democratic lawmakers, senior Biden administration officials, including Brett McGurk, the White House’s Middle East and Africa coordinator, heard their complaints as they feel the administration has not given them enough information regarding nuclear talks with Iran.
For their part, Republicans say that Russia will certainly reap significant economic benefits from continued nuclear trade with Iran under any new agreement.
In this context, Senator Mitt Romney, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said: “There should be no other agreement that helps Iran. Any deal puts more money in Iran’s handsAnd any agreement that allows Russia to obtain funding through the new JCPOA is meaningless.”
Romney said the new agreement would direct the money “absolutely” to Russia, despite the heavy sanctions the United States and Europe have imposed on Moscow since the start of the war in Ukraine. He continued, “Russia is linked to the reprocessing of some (Iranian) nuclear fuel, and this puts money in its pockets.”
For his part, a US State Department spokesman made clear that the administration would not impose sanctions on Russia for its participation in any activity agreed upon under a new nuclear agreement with Iran.