“If Iran’s true intent is to get a nuclear weapon, under this agreement, it must simply exercise patience”, Senator Chuck Schumer argued.
Chuck Schumer says he will vote the nuclear deal with Iran down.
 “The very real risk that Iran will not moderate and will, instead, use the agreement to pursue its nefarious goals is too great”, Schumer said in announcing his opposition to the deal.
We have written before about why the Iran deal is so bad – from the billions of dollars handed over to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism to the phantom checks and balances put in place on Iran’s nuclear programs. “What I’m interested in is the deal itself and can we enforce it”. Most Republicans want to kill the deal, making the battleground for votes among Democrats.
Another influential Jew-ish lawmaker, US Representative Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, also said on Thursday he would oppose the nuclear pact.
Mr Schumer, who represents New York, is America’s most powerful Jewish elected official, and is expected to become the Democrat’s leader in the Senate next year.
Schumer’s decision is a blow to the administration, though it remains to be seen how many other Democratic lawmakers follow the New York senator.
When Congress returns in September from a month long recess, it will consider a resolution to disapprove of President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran, which would lift sanctions on the country in exchange for a rolling back of Iran’s nuclear program. In the lead up to the vote, Republicans are on the offensive, attacking the White House for a deal they say is not “in our national interest.”
“The administration has tried to undermine the spirit of the law by going straight to the U.N. for approval in hopes of pressuring Congress to accept it,” Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, said Saturday in a video. “Congress must not be intimidated by this. The real decision for lawmakers isn’t this deal or war. The real decision is whether Congress believes this deal is in our national interest.”
But Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair, lobbed a shot directly at the president, accusing him of misleading Congress over the deal’s necessity.
“The president has said repeatedly that this is a choice between accepting this deal or going to war. It is not,” Corker said. “Throughout the negotiations, the administration routinely asserted that ’no deal is better than a bad deal’ and threatened to walk away if necessary. So clearly there was always another option for the White House — and it wasn’t war.”
Corker laid out his objections, saying the agreement doesn’t guarantee “anytime, anywhere inspections” nor does the deal allow U.S. inspectors on the ground.
“Instead of the once-promised ’anytime, anywhere’ inspections, this agreement gives Iran nearly a month of advanced notice to hide any evidence of developing a nuclear weapon,” the Tennessee Republican said. “Even worse, there are two secret side deals — we can’t ever see — that appear to restrict inspectors’ access to key sites.”
“Iran will go from a weakened state to an economically robust country without being forced to change any of its roguish, destructive behavior,” Corker said.