Acutely aware of Republican fury over the Iran nuclear deal, Senate Democrats on Thursday introduced a plan that helps prevent Tehran from cheating on its obligations under the agreement and boosts security for Israel, AFP reported.
The measure is sponsored by nine Democrats, including senior Senators Ben Cardin and Chuck Schumer, who both opposed the landmark accord that reins in Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for an easing of sanctions.
Congress recently endured a brutal, weeks-long debate over the nuclear agreement. With every Republican voting against, the deal earned a majority of disapproval in Congress, although Democrats were able to prevent the pact from being blocked.
“We are concentrating on tomorrow, not the past, to ensure that the agreement is enforced, that Iran is permanently prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon. That’s our objective,” said Cardin, top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to AFP.
Sponsors said the Iran Policy Oversight Act would allow for tracking of funds that Iran gained from sanctions relief under the deal, to monitor whether or not the tens of billions of dollars is used for nefarious purposes including financing terrorist operations.
“We need to watch those funds like a hawk, and ensure that they’re not going to fund terror in the Middle East,” Schumer said.
While the accord would lift economic sanctions, the new legislation reaffirms lawmakers’ commitment to maintaining Iranian sanctions related to terror financing and human rights abuses.
And it “reassures that our allies, especially Israel, will be provided with enhanced assets needed to deter Iran,” Senator Richard Blumenthal said.
The measure reaffirms the use of the military option to ensure that Iran does not develop a nuclear weapons capability.
It also would require the administration to present a strategy for countering Iranian threats in the Middle East every two years, as well as reports detailing Iran’s use of funds gained through sanctions relief, its nuclear research and development activities and nuclear weapon capability breakout time.
The new measure was introduced several days after Republicans said they were introducing legislation that would use frozen Iranian assets to pay American victims of Iranian terrorism before billions of dollars are returned to Tehran as part of the nuclear deal.
In backing the bill, House Speaker John Boehner said it would be unfair for Obama to “provide Iran with about $100 billion of their assets locked up in Western banks, without first paying the victims of Iranian terrorism.”
Republicans have continued to fight the deal despite Democrats’ attempts to stop them, with moves being initiated in the Senate to sue Obama for not giving Congress access to classified side deals between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in their review period, and demanding the review period be restarted as a result.
Those side deals stipulate among other things that Iran will inspect its own covert nuclear site of Parchin without international inspectors being allowed. At the site Iran has reportedly conducted nuclear detonator experiments.
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