(WASHINGTON) — With talks resuming in Geneva Wednesday over Iran’s controversial nuclear program, two U.S. lawmakers have little faith that a U.S. plan will keep Tehran from acquiring an atomic bomb.
California Republican Congressman Ed Royce, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and ranking Democrat Eliot Engel of New York wrote President Obama on Tuesday that the U.S. “cannot allow Iran to continue to advance toward a nuclear weapons capability while at the same time providing relief from the sanctions pressure we worked so hard to build.”
Royce and Engel added their voices to a group of senators who say that Iran will have to give up very little to have crippling economic restrictions lifted, a position also expressed publicly by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some Arab allies of the U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who is lending assistance to talks between the so-called P5+1 group of world powers and Iran, contends that the U.S. is going into negotiations with its eyes wide open, fully aware of Iran’s duplicity in the past.
He responded to the letter from Royce and Engel by saying, “Nothing that we are doing here, in my judgment, will put Israel at any additional risk. In fact, let me make this clear: We believe it reduces risk.”
