Tennessee Senator Bob Corker largely focused on one “what if” question today at a hearing into the Iran nuclear deal. In his words: “What would happen if we decided not to lift our Congressionally mandated sanctions?”
The agreement, as negotiated, calls for stringent limits on Iran’s nuclear activity. In exchange, world powers would lift economic sanctions against Iran. Nicholas Burns is a former diplomat who helped hammer out those sanctions during the Bush Administration. He thinks the deal is a relatively good one.
Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Burns started to answer Corker by saying a failure to lift sanctions would be considered a breach of the deal.
Senator Corker cut him off. “Well, let me say this: the administration, Iran, the UN, the EU all knew that we were going to have a chance to weigh in.”
Corker says everyone should have expected that Congress would want to tweak things. But now that there’s a deal — one that the other nations at the table like — Burns says you can’t pull out a major piece of the deal and expect the rest to stand.
“The agreement would never go into force and that would mean the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program would not be in place.”
Corker seemed to lean towards the argument put forward by another expert witness. Mark Dubowitz from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies says it’s unlikely Russia and China would let Iran become a nuclear power. He also argued the US is a big enough economic power that our sanctions could have a major impact, even without international buy-in.
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