The Senate's Red Line: No Immediate Sanctions Relief as Demanded by Iran

The leader of the panel that unanimously passed out of committee a bill requiring congressional approval of any deal with Iran vowed to stop any sanctions repeal that isn’t incremental.

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Iran has insisted publicly for many weeks now that it will not accept anything less than all sanctions repealed on the day they sign the final deal.

“As you know, at present, right now, the leadership in Iran is telling their citizens one thing. Our president and others are telling us another. The only way we will ever know what are the details, understand what is in the classified annexes is for us to pass these pieces of legislation that are before us, because, otherwise, we may never know until way after the fact exactly what the agreement is,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told CNN this morning.

“So, look, I think it’s very important, yes, that the phased — the sanctions be phased, so that we see how Iran is behaving, and whether they are actually living up to the arrangement, that we are building up trust,” Corker said. “But, no, to alleviate those on the front end obviously just gives them immediately more money to conduct terrorist acts throughout the Middle East and to continue the hegemony that they have been involved in for the last several years.”

Asked directly if he would stop the Obama administration from lifting sanctions in a manner that was not phased in over time, he replied, “Yes.”

The chairman stressed there are “lots of questions right now, when you start teasing out the details from Secretary Kerry and others.”

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“What are our abilities to — on an instant, to get into these facilities, to know what is happening? Are we going to go back to exactly what happened under Saddam Hussein, where they kept moving the ball, where, for months and months and months, we didn’t have the ability to get in?” Corker asked.

“…The public will never see, never see the classified annexes. And I think, on their behalf, they want someone, they want Senator Cardin, myself, our colleagues, the 98 others who will have the opportunity to do this, to actually see those details prior to the sanctions being relieved, to be able to debate those, and certainly to be able to make sure that they comply.”

Ranking Member Ben Cardin (D-Md.) declared on CNN that “America is stronger today” because of the 19-0 vote on the Corker-Menendez bill last week.

“It’s not unusual to have any administration disagree as to what role Congress should play in any of the work that they are doing, but I think we have worked out the right way, the right way for a thoughtful review by Congress to look at sanctions, since we imposed the sanctions, as to how those sanctions will be handled,” Cardin said.

Said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Fox this morning: “Don’t think there’s a snowball chance in hell that a Congress is going to approve this framework the way it’s set up.”

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“The ayatollah saying he gets immediate sanction relief with no intrusive inspections,” Graham said. “…And I don’t think there’s any chance we’re going to lift congressional sanctions as long as you have hardened sites like Fordow still open.”

“If the final agreement doesn’t allow any time, anywhere inspections, it has a large enrichment program, it keeps Fordow, an underground secret site, reinforced site open that he will get his — it will be rejected large enough to override a veto because members of the Senate understand that this is the most consequential vote we will ever take and the Iranians can’t be trusted, they lie, they cheat.”

As the White House, knowing it was defeated on Corker-Menendez, acquiesced and said it could live with the bill as written, Congressional Republican leadership fired a shot across President Obama’s bow Saturday by turning the weekly GOP address over to Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), co-author of the Menendez-Kirk sanctions bill.

“Iran is the world’s biggest state sponsor of terror. Iran’s aytatollahs are now trying to build their own nuclear weapons. Iranian leaders have repeatedly threatened to annihilate Jewish families across the state of Israel,” Kirk said.

“Four years ago I authored a bipartisan Iran sanctions Legislation that passed the Senate by a vote of 100-0. These sanctions forced Iran back to the negotiating table. They were so effective that they dropped the value of Iran’s currency by three-quarters. This was probably the entire reason why the Iranians even showed up at the negotiations,” he continued.

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“Lately, Iran has tried to backtrack on the promises they made to President Obama. Iran now wants sanctions immediately lifted, which would fund Iran’s terror subsidiaries with billions. Secretary Kerry recently testified before the Senate and said it would only take two more months for Iran to build a bomb. We must use strong economic pressure on Iran to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons.”

Stopping Iran from getting the bomb, the senator stressed, is “the greatest challenge to peace in our time.”

“After the Holocaust we promised ‘never again,'” Kirk said. “We must keep terrorists from hurting our allies and our nation.”

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