In a row over imposing new sanctions on Iran with White House, GOP senators say many Democrats back their sanction bill
While the WH opposes the bill saying it would harm sensitive nuclear talks, the senate measure has gained the support of at least 59 votes officially which would impose new sanctions in six months if Iran fails to follow the interim agreement and dismantle its “illicit nuclear infrastructure,” including fuel-production facilities, its heavy water reactor under construction in Arak “and any nuclear weapon and production components.” The bill also calls for sanctions to be increased if the Iranian regime-backed militias engage in anti-American terrorism or if Iran tests a missile with range of 300 miles or more.
Republican senators will press ahead with a bill that would increase sanctions on Iran as a backstop to negotiations and said no Democrats have abandoned the effort despite lobbying by President Barack Obama.
“We still have 59 co-sponsors on the sanctions bill,” said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo. a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Barrasso said he spoke to committee Chairman Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., “and he’s fully supportive” of seeking a vote on the bill.
“We’re going to try to attach it to every vote that comes up before the Senate,” Barrasso said. “That plan is not changing.”
The push comes in a week when Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araghchi, said that if Iran decides to resume enriching uranium to levels prohibited by a nuclear deal it could do so in one day.
Such a possibility is exactly what the senators backing the sanctions have been concerned about. It’s also why critics demand Obama negotiate a deal in line with United Nations demands that Iran disassemble its centrifuges that can make bomb-grade uranium and ban it from enriching nuclear fuel at any level.
“We can return again to 20 percent enrichment in less than one day, and we can convert the nuclear material again,” Araghchi told the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Channel 2. “Therefore, the structure of our nuclear program is preserved.”
Araghchi has said Iran “will in no way, never, dismantle our centrifuges.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon said Obama pledged to sign a bill that would tighten sanctions “if Iran isn’t willing in the end to make the decisions that are necessary to make it work,” according to the Associated Press.
The agreement requires Iran to curtail some nuclear activities, including transforming its stockpile of nuclear fuel that is close to bomb grade to a form that takes it a step away from bomb fuel.
In return, Iran gets about $7 billion in sanctions relief and a U.S. pledge not to impose new sanctions while negotiators seek a comprehensive deal. Sanctions already in place have cost the Iran economy billions of dollars.
Critics of the deal say it failed to dismantle any of Iran’s industrial-scale infrastructures for producing nuclear fuel, which can be used to power nuclear reactors or weapons, and it failed to address the military component of Iran’s nuclear program.