Kerry to House: Give us time on Iran deal

Secretary of State John Kerry urged Congress Monday for more time and space to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. 

Joined by Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Kerry asked House lawmakers to resist legislation the White House says will undermine the ongoing talks ahead of a June 30 deadline to hash out the details. 

{mosads}”We have two and a half months more to negotiate. That’s a serious amount of time, with some serious business still to do,” Kerry told reporters in the Capitol just before the meeting. “So we hope Congress will listen carefully and ask the questions that it wants, but also give us the space and the time to be able to complete a very difficult task, which has high stakes for our country.” 

But Kerry’s pitch, which marked the first time administration officials met face-to-face with House lawmakers since a framework deal was announced April 3, left GOP leaders unswayed.  

“Based on the briefing we had, my serious concerns about this deal with Iran have only been reinforced,” Rep. Steve Scalise (La.), the Republican whip, said afterwards. 

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, agreed.  

“What I heard was an administration very much in a selling mode,” he said. “A lot of people have a lot of questions  – and they gave some information, I don’t mean they didn’t – but it was very much in a hard-sell sort of approach, and I think they would have been more persuasive if they had kind of not been so much.”  

The Republicans are lining up behind legislation that would empower Congress to review any nuclear deal with Iran before it’s finalized. A Senate proposal, sponsored by Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), is slated for a panel vote on Tuesday and appears to have enough Democratic support to defeat a filibuster if it reaches the floor. 

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Monday that he’ll take up Corker’s bill if it passes the upper chamber.  

“If he is able to get his agreement out of the Senate, it is my intention to bring it to the floor of the House and move it,” McCarthy said. 

The ultimate fate of the legislation could rest on the Democrats. President Obama has vowed to veto the Corker bill, but it remains unclear if Republicans can find enough Democratic support to override that veto. 

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) came out forcefully against the Corker bill last week, warning that the legislation will “undermine” a deal at a crucial juncture in the talks. And a number of other liberal Democrats emerged from Monday’s meeting with Kerry with the same message.  

“I don’t think that we should undermine the ability of our country to try to reach an agreement that could help preserve peace,” Rep. Xavier Becerra (Calif.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said afterwards. “It’d be difficult for me to support a bill that has us casting votes before we know what a deal even looks like. … I want to see what the deal looks like.”  

Even Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who has suggested he’d support the Corker bill, said Monday night that the administration should be given the space to negotiate a final deal – as long as Congress is guaranteed a vote on it afterwards. 

“We have an obligation to allow the administration to take the time necessary to give us a deal. And I reserve the right as a member of Congress to vote yes or to vote no. But Congress ought to be able to vote,” Israel, who heads the Democrats’ messaging arm, told reporters. “That’s what this is all about. It is whether Congress has the right to vote to take a vote.” 

Other Democrats also voiced reservations with the emerging agreement.  

Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.) said he has “a lot of concerns” with the deal and “would lean toward supporting something along the lines of the Corker bill.” 

Lipinski said Kerry’s presentation neither eliminated his existing concerns nor raised new ones. “But these things never do,” he said. “In a situation like this, there’s only so much [information] you can get.” 

Still, many more Democrats appeared ready to heed the White House’s request to oppose the Corker bill while the talks are ongoing.  

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) said the Republican critics of the nuclear framework are based largely on “political calculations of just wanting to oppose the president on anything that he wants.” 

Himes said Kerry alleviated a big concern by assuring lawmakers that economic sanctions against Iran “will remain in place until the Iranians comply.” 

“That’s a key factor,” Himes said. 

“His [Kerry’s] main message was, like everything else, don’t judge this against the perfect, judge it against the alternatives. He kept trying to pound that point home,” Himes added “One Republican said, ‘If this is a bad deal, maybe there will be a terrible arms race in that region.’ And the secretary said, ‘If there is no deal, there will be an arms race in the region.’ So he was pretty passionate about it.” 

Kerry and Moniz will return to the Capitol Tuesday morning for another pitch to House Democrats at their weekly caucus meeting. Afterwards, they will brief Senate lawmakers on the framework deal.