As they vacation at home, lawmakers will face intense pressure from voters to oppose (or support) Iran deal
Three weeks after the festive Vienna signing of the nuclear limitations deal between Iran and world powers, President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented it to the American public and its congressional representatives – the first in order to obtain their approval, the latter hoping for their disapproval. Senators and congressmen are now leaving Washington for their summer recess, but the fight is far from over. Intense lobbying efforts will continue in the lawmakers’ hometowns, with constituents trying to sway them to vote this way or that.
The battle is a purely mathematical one. It is widely assumed that both the House and the Senate will muster a majority to disapprove the deal when it comes up for a vote next month. But in order to override – or sustain – a presidential veto blocking the results of the vote, opponents – or proponents – of the deal need the support of 44 Democrats in the House and 13 in the Senate.
Right now, the numbers add up to a blurred picture. On the one hand, various national opinion polls consistently show a majority of Americans oppose the deal and want Congress to reject it.
Some Democratic members of the House have announced their opposition. And then there are the many key Democratic senators who are still undecided – and will probably not declare their intentions until the last minute, hoping to avoid heavy lobbying pressure.
With the trend unclear, administration officials, as well as Democratic supporters of the deal, are sure the momentum is building their way – and so are Republican senators. “The more we learn about the deal, the more Democrats are opposing it,” said Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, speaking with Israeli diplomatic correspondents on Capitol Hill this week. Cotton, one of the loudest Republican opponents of the deal, sparked a controversy last March when he wrote to Iranian leaders informing them that any deal reached would not be binding on the next US president. “This is not a partisan matter, and not a Democratic deal or a Republican deal,” he added at the time. This week Cotton continued in the same vein. “More and more Democrats are worried about us giving an anti-Semitic regime tens of billions of dollars. The mullahs are not chanting ’Death to Republicans or Death to Democrats’ – they are chanting ’Death to Israel and Death to America’, and most Americans don’t believe that the words mullahs and uranium go well together.”
Robert Menendez, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, is widely assumed to be one of the Democrats who will vote nay, though he hasn’t announced it officially. “There are probably a dozen Democrats who are seriously undecided,” he says, and explains the dilemma: “If one comes to the conclusion that this is a bad deal, that doesn’t rise to the interest of the US or our allies – they will have to be a profile in courage. If you are a Democrat it is not easy to vote against the president. But I didn’t take my oath of office to my president or party but to my country.”
Many Republicans oppose the administration’s framing of the choice to be made as one between an agreement and war. Senator John McCain of Arizona, chair of the Armed Services Committee, says that every witness who appeared at the panel hearings was asked if this was the only choice to be made. “Every witness said ’no, there are other options’. So we have to dispense with the idea that there are only two choices.”
Menendez, one of the leading pro-sanctions activists in recent years, also opposes this equation. “I do not believe that it’s this or war. I think there is a course of action that can take us to a better deal. I look at the agreement and I refer back to what was the starting point of the administration – that Iran will not have the capacity to achieve a nuclear weapon, and that no deal is better than a bad deal. From that point we have gone to ’this deal or war’ – which I reject categorically.” Cotton, for his part, stressed the importance of maintaining a realistic military option. “There is no doubt the US can set them back to day zero, and it’s critical the credible threat of force back up our policy,” he said.
McCain, one of the Capitol Hill’s veterans, told the Israeli reporters that “when these talks began – Iran was a pariah nation. Now it is the US that is being viewed as a nation blocking progress. “Polls show a majority of Americans disapprove and the gap is getting larger. We are all going to be home during the month of August, meeting constituents. Things might change.”

I24News website, 6 August 2015