Senate GOP Looks for New Ways to Undermine Iran Pact

Congress to Try to Impose New Sanctions to Replace What Deal Will Remove

With Senate Democrats nearing enough support to filibuster the bill, Republicans have just plain lost on the effort to block US involvement in the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran. That doesn’t mean they’re giving up, however, and are rather preparing a series of spite resolutions to undermine it.

The new resolutions are expected to include a second bill on “approving” the international deal, instead of blocking it, just to show up the president by voting it down, as well as massive new military aid for Israel, military authorizations for operations against Iran.

The biggest of these resolutions, however, is to tack a bunch of new sanctions onto the expiring Iran Sanctions Act, in effect trying to impose a bunch of new sanctions on Iran that replace all the ones the P5+1 deal remove, and using Israel as the justification.

Israel Lobby AIPAC, which heavily funded the lobbying against the deal, has its own proposed bill, which aims to impose a bunch of new obstacles to implementation of the pact, as well as setting up an “expedited” method for Congress to impose new Iran sanctions in the future.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.