Herald Tribune, 26 July 2015

Three days before his House committee was set to begin a hearing on the Iran nuclear deal, U.S. Rep. Ed Royce, R-California, conversed with Southwest Florida residents on Saturday about the proposed agreement.
There was standing room only in the Selby Auditorium at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus as more than 150 people flocked to the foreign affairs town hall where Royce spoke and U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key, hosted.
The event was dominated by a question-and-answer forum that lasted for about an hour. To the apparent delight of his audience, Royce spent much of the time denouncing the current deal and proposing that the U.S. instead engage in “coercive diplomacy,” threatening harsher sanctions against Iran that could “implode” the Middle Eastern country’s economy.
“Under the coercive diplomacy option of putting the types of sanction on the Iranian regime that we put on North Korea, it would give the Ayatollah a stark choice between real compromise on his nuclear program or economic collapse,” he said. “What is it like in a totalitarian country where a dictator can’t pay his generals?”
For a chance at coercive diplomacy, the GOP-controlled Congress will have to not only vote to disapprove the deal at the end of a 60-day review period that began on Monday, but also override a veto President Barack Obama has promised with a two-thirds majority of both the House of Representatives and Senate.
“Take the vote today and it’s pretty close I think,” said Buchanan, who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee with Royce, its chairman.
“Take the vote in 60 days, and it’s a very different story.”