House Oversight Panel to Investigate Obama Support for Iran Deal

Still resenting their inability to override President Obama’s veto of the bill which aimed to block the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran, the House Oversight Committee is planning to announce sweeping investigations into the circumstances surrounding the bill, accusing President Obama of having undermined national security with moves in support of the deal.

In particular, this involves a series of Iranian detainees held on charges of violating sanctions ahead of the deal, with many in Congress believing that the charges against them were deliberately understated by the administration for the sake of getting the prisoners released as part of negotiations.

The argument here centers mostly around “dual-use” technologies, and the exports of parts that were technically covered by the sanctions because they could conceivably be used as parts for weapons, but the Obama Administration not believing that was necessarily the point of the items’ export.

21 Iranians had charges dropped in this, and many in Congress are pushing hard to find out what became of them. They are also saying the dropping of charges amounted to President Obama deliberately trying to deceive the American public about the nuclear deal itself.

Of course, this effort is being pushed by opponents of the P5+1 deal, and the hope among them appears to be that they can use these hearings as part of a continuing effort to try to get the US to withdraw from the deal outright.