U.S. Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday that he’s moving ahead with his bill to give Congress a mandatory review of the recent Iran nuclear agreement.
Corker told “Fox News Sunday” the Senate is close to having the 67 votes needed to override a presidential veto.
The legislation, which has strong bipartisan support, would prevent President Obama from lifting economic sanctions on the Iranian regime for 60 days while Congress reviews the deal.
The Congress has insisted that members have a final say on the deal to ensure Americans that the Obama administration is not accepting a bad deal.
The Senate committee is set to vote April 14 on the bipartisan bill.
After the agreement was reached Thursday, President Obama warned, “If Congress kills this deal — not based on expert analysis, and without offering any reasonable alternative — then it’s the United States that will be blamed for the failure of diplomacy. International unity will collapse, and the path to conflict will widen.”
Corker also said Sunday that negotiators of the deal told him that Congress’ input and the threat of sanctions didn’t hurt negotiations and in fact were factors in reaching a better deal.
Meanwhile, in an interview with The New York Times President Obama staunchly defended a framework nuclear agreement with Iran as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to prevent a bomb and bring longer-term stability to the Middle East.
He argued that successful negotiations presented the most effective way to keep the Iranian regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but insisted he would keep all options on the table if Tehran were to violate the terms.
“I’ve been very clear that Iran will not get a nuclear weapon on my watch, and I think they should understand that we mean it,” Obama said in the interview published Sunday. “But I say that hoping that we can conclude this diplomatic arrangement — and that it ushers a new era in U.S.-Iranian relations — and, just as importantly, over time, a new era in Iranian relations with its neighbors.”
Obama said there are many details that still need to be worked out with and cautioned that there would be “real political difficulties” in implementing an agreement in both countries.
On the substance of the nuclear framework agreement, Obama outlined more specifics of how the U.S. would seek to verify that Tehran wasn’t cheating. He said there would be an “international mechanism” that would assess whether there needed to be an inspection at a suspicious site and could overrule objections by the Iranian regime.