Congress fires its first warning shot on Biden's Iran deal

[brooklynite]

Source: Politico

President Joe Biden’s bid to revive the Iran nuclear deal flunked its first test in the U.S. Senate.

A bipartisan super-majority of senators voted late Wednesday to endorse a Republican-led measure stating that any nuclear agreement with Tehran should also address Iran’s support for terrorism in the region, and that the U.S. should not lift sanctions on an elite branch of the Iranian military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

While the measure itself was non-binding, the vote was hailed as a modest victory for Republicans who have pushed the Biden administration to walk away from the talks in Vienna, where a final deal has eluded negotiators.

Lawmakers from both parties said it was a warning shot to Biden’s negotiating team, who have all but acknowledged in private that an agreement that goes beyond curtailing Iran’s nuclear program is no longer possible, according to multiple people familiar with classified Hill briefings on the subject.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/05/congress-warning-biden-iran-deal-00030448

[ripcord]

1. Iran has been a state sponsor of terror for decades

I don't think holding them responsible and expecting them to change is too much to expect.

[Johnny2X2X]

4. This is a separate issue

It's a simple question, do we want a state sponsor of terrorism to be a nuclear power? We had a deal in place that prevented them from developing a nuclear weapon, that deal is gone and a nuclear armed Iran is now near unless we get another deal to stop it.

[Igel]

2. Russia has its hand in this.

It's a low-grade ally of Iran, and Iran's helped ship weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine.

At the same time, it's a way for Russia to skirt sanctions.

And both are allies of Assad.

And Iran has its own internal "we're just a gnat's wing to the right of progressive" problem. As it develops ever more powerful weapons.

The only reason to fear Iran at this point is potential nuclear deterrence. But given how "things" kept popping up that in isolation might mean that Iran was skirting the original agreement (but each could, in isolation, be discounted as meaningless), it was harder and harder to think that Iran was actually abiding by the spirit or even the letter of the deal. Meanwhile, there was an upsurge in discrete support for Assad, Hezbollah, Houthi, often going back to the Revolutionary Guards. ...

In the same way that the accidental boldfacing of random letters is, well, completely accidental and therefore meaningless.

Apparently a main broker for the US and Iran has been, ahem, Russian. Not that *any* Putin-appointed broker could have ulterior motives. We should trust him absolutely!