Republicans on Thursday honed their attack plan against President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal in Congress, targeting part of the pact that calls for eventually rolling back a U.N. arms embargo on Tehran.
Opponents of the nuclear agreement hope to use the arms embargo issue, one of the final obstacles to the accord sealed in Vienna on Tuesday between Iran and six world powers, to draw some of Obama’s wavering Democrats into helping to derail it.
“It blows my mind that the administration would agree to lift the arms and missile bans,” John Boehner, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and the top Republican in Congress, told reporters.
“It’s hard for us to accept it, so we just want to take a look at it,” said Senator Ben Cardin, top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Critics of the broader deal say easing sanctions will empower Iran financially to expand its influence in the Middle East in the near term. But many lawmakers are just as worried that Tehran’s access to advanced arms – even years down the line – would give it even greater ability to fuel regional sectarian strife.
With Congress due to begin a 60-day review of the Iran deal, Republicans hope that misgivings expressed earlier by top Pentagon officials when the arms embargo issue was still under negotiation would give them further leverage with Democrats.
Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional hearing last week: “Under no circumstances should we relieve pressure on Iran relative to ballistic missile capabilities and arms trafficking.”
She insisted that while Iran wanted an immediate lifting of the embargo, the United States won a “very tough” bargain in stretching it out for years.
With a U.N. Security Council vote on a resolution considered likely as early as next week, the Republican chairs of the House Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security Committees have sent a letter to Obama asking him to delay the vote.
Republicans would need the support of dozens of Democrats to sustain a “resolution of disapproval” that could cripple a deal.

Reuters, 17 July 2015