






















A rare bipartisan consensus is forming in the Capitol: Any final nuclear agreement that President Donald Trump strikes with Iran this year must get a vote in Congress.
Republicans who pressed Congress to debate then-President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal 11 years ago say the law requiring congressional review of US-Iran nuclear accords will apply to anything Trump settles on during the 60-day negotiation window.
Democrats agree, and some even argue that Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran — which Congress still hasn’t seen — should be subject to congressional debate.
The only real daylight between the parties on Iran is over whether the White House will take congressional consideration seriously, as Republicans hope, or try to ignore the Hill, as Democrats anticipate. Trump said on Tuesday he would send any future agreement to Congress, but it’s not clear how lawmakers might hold him accountable if he changes his mind.
“It’s very clear in federal law that the Senate gets to weigh in, and we will,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, told Semafor, but “I think they are absolutely going to try to circumvent it. … They don’t want this thing to be on the floor of the Senate.”
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., countered that the Trump administration has “good lawyers; they can read the law,” which clearly calls for submission to Congress.
“If the president strikes an agreement with the Iranians, it has to come before us,” Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., told Semafor. “My expectation, informed by the fact that so many Republicans have just gone on record and indicated the deal has to come through us for sanction, my expectation is they’ll want to put it before Congress.”
The White House, asked for comment, pointed to Trump’s remarks on Tuesday that “I like the idea” of sending any deal to the Hill.
The prospect of an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program remains hypothetical, however while lawmakers from Senate Majority Leader John Thune on down are still in the dark about what is in the memo Trump signed on Sunday.
Some GOP senators don’t think much of what they’ve heard so far about the memo, including indications that Iran may hold new sway over a reopened Strait of Hormuz and receive financial rewards once it meets benchmarks for winding down its nuclear program.
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, released a stern statement on Tuesday saying “a deal of this magnitude deserves thorough review.”
Iran would get some immediate benefits under Trump’s agreement even if a nuclear deal isn’t reached, such as the ability to sell oil, as The Wall Street Journal reported.
The early skepticism about those provisions suggests that some Republicans would defect on any resolution disapproving of a Trump nuclear deal — or, at a minimum, agonize about what to do.
“So far, it seems a bad deal. But I have not seen final details,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., whom Trump helped defeat in a Senate primary. “We spent anywhere from $25 to $100 billion … And we got 13 Americans dead, and we’ve not achieved any of the goals that we had at the outset.”
Cassidy added that he thought a future US-Iran nuclear agreement should be treated like a treaty, which requires ratification by the Senate with a two-thirds majority vote. Republicans argued the same of Obama’s deal, which would not have hit that threshold.
Ultimately, Obama lost several votes on his deal, including from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. In that vote, Republicans put forward a disapproval resolution that Democrats — then in the minority — filibustered.
“We’re going to need to be heard from on this if there’s a deal that deals with the nuclear program,” said Thune. He said he couldn’t comment on the substance of the deal, since he hasn’t seen the memo or had a briefing. He’s asking for both.
此内容由惯性聚合(RSS阅读器)自动聚合整理,仅供阅读参考。 原文来自 — 版权归原作者所有。