Eye on Iran: House Majority Demands Obama Consult Congress on Iran Nuclear Deal

Join UANI           Top Stories The Hill: "More than three-quarters of the House are demanding President Obama consult with Congress on any final nuclear agreement with Iran as the deadline for negotiations nears. 'Any permanent sanctions relief demands congressional approval,' 344 lawmakers from both sides of the aisle wrote in a letter sent to Obama on Thursday. The Obama administration has said a final agreement with Iran could bring its government phased relief from sanctions tied to its nuclear activity. Diplomats are currently in Vienna, Austria, working toward a July 20 deadline to strike a deal, though recent reports said negotiators were making little progress. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and the panel's ranking member, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), gathered support for the letter. The letter was also signed by other top lawmakers including Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.), House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.). The lawmakers referred to remarks Secretary of State John Kerry recently made at a congressional hearing in which he suggested Congress would be kept in the loop if a deal is struck... The lawmakers expressed concern, however, over the boundaries of sanctions relief, which appear to be murky. U.S. law, they said, doesn't exclusively define the sanctions against Iran as 'nuclear-related' and instead apply toward many other areas." http://t.uani.com/1kLi1dk Global Security Newswire: "The chairman of a key House committee on Thursday charged that the Obama administration is gutting nonproliferation norms in its negotiating stance toward Iran, especially in light of its policy approach toward inking nuclear trade agreements elsewhere around the world. 'For an administration that has held out nonproliferation as a signature issue,' its nuclear-trade negotiating policy 'is a dramatic retreat from the so-called gold standard, the gold standard policy under which countries were pressed to forgo acquiring ... potentially dangerous technologies,' Representative Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said at a committee hearing. 'In November,' he said, 'the administration conceded that Iran will be allowed to retain a uranium enrichment capability, a bomb-making capacity, in any final deal. That is the effective melting of the gold standard.' A State Department spokesman coined the term 'gold standard' in 2009 to describe a nuclear cooperation agreement the Obama team had just renegotiated with the United Arab Emirates, formalizing the Persian Gulf nation's pledge to abstain from domestically producing nuclear fuel... Henry Sokolski, one of three issue experts appearing at the House panel's session, suggested that ongoing nuclear-trade talks with other Mideast states and elsewhere around the world could be affected by what is ultimately agreed to with Iran. '[Do] Saudi Arabia, South Korea, [or] Japan start reprocessing? What does that do with China? Those things are going to keep you up at night,' said Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. 'If we don't up the ante and push on the other suppliers to raise theirs, you know where we're headed.'" http://t.uani.com/1oKB361 Al Hayat: "Dr. Gary Samore, former adviser to President Obama on weapons of mass destruction, said in a telephone interview organized by the Clarion Project with diplomats and journalists, 'Both sides are very constrained by domestic politics. President Obama can't sell a nuclear deal to Congress if it allows Iran to retain a credible nuclear weapons option, and President (Hassan) Rohani cannot sell a nuclear deal to Supreme Leader Khamenei if it requires Iran to give up its nuclear weapons option.' Samore is strongly opposed to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. He is the president of United Against Nuclear Iran and the executive director for research at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government. Dr. Samore expects that in the event a final deal is not reached, the interim agreement would be extended and renewed for another six months, as this would serve the interests of both sides: Iran would get more gradual sanction relief without abandoning its nuclear program, while the United States (and its allies) would succeed in continuing to freeze the most important part of Iran's nuclear program." http://t.uani.com/1q3u79G     Nuclear Program & Negotiations NYT: "With the Vienna negotiations over Iran's nuclear activities making halting progress at best and a deadline looming, the Obama administration announced Thursday that Secretary of State John Kerry would fly here this weekend to assess whether a deal is possible - and perhaps to begin negotiating an extension in the talks that both sides said they had wanted to avoid. Mr. Kerry will be joined by the foreign ministers of several, but probably not all, of the other nations engaged in the talks, which include Germany, Britain, France, China and Russia. Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has been here since July 2, as all sides have haggled over a deal that can not only be agreed upon among themselves, but also has a chance of satisfying Congress and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps." http://t.uani.com/1ztF0Du AP: "Big-power foreign ministers are joining Iran nuclear talks on a diplomatic rescue mission. But even their muscle is seen as unlikely to bridge differences on Tehran's atomic activities in time to meet the July 20 target date for a deal. 'Obviously both sides have set out positions that are irreconcilable,' says Gary Samore, who left the U.S. team negotiating with Iran last year. 'That's why this negotiation is not going to end in agreement.' ... But Samore, who is now with Harvard's Belfer Center, thinks the sides may agree to the full six months, saying 'there is no reason to believe that the fundamental disagreement ... can be resolved any time soon.'" http://t.uani.com/1sGx6Cc Sanctions Relief WSJ: "Iran's oil exports dropped to their lowest level since October but are still set to narrowly surpass an agreed cap at the end of the month, data released by a top energy watchdog showed Friday. An interim nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers requires the Islamic Republic to keep its crude exports at 1 million barrels a day on average over the six months ending July 20. In its monthly oil-market report, the International Energy Agency-which advises industrialized nations on oil policies-said Iran's oil exports, including crude and condensates, had fallen by 26% in June to 1.08 million barrels a day amid sharp cuts by its two largest Asian buyers. That low level had not been reached since October when it stood at 715,000 barrels a day, according to previous IEA data. China has cut its Iranian oil imports by 36% in just two months to 510,000 barrels a day after building up its strategic reserves, the IEA said. India's oil purchases from the Islamic Republic have dropped 29% in the same period to reach 141,000 barrels a day." http://t.uani.com/1mRoN75 Fars News (Iran): "Germany's exports to Iran witnessed a remarkable 20% growth in the first four months of the current year. Trade exchange between Iran and Germany in the first four months of the current year increased by 19 percent compared with the same period last year. Eurostat reported that bilateral trade from January to April 2013 stood at €759 million, which figure soared to €904 million in the same period of the current year. German exports to Iran in the first four months increased by 20 percent, reaching €797 million compared with last year's figure." http://t.uani.com/1tv0P55 Foreign Affairs Fars News (Iran): "Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in separate letters to heads of Muslim states urged them to do their best to help the oppressed Palestinian people and lift the siege of the Gaza strip. 'Unity of Muslim countries against the enemies is vital at this juncture,' President Rouhani said in his letters. Meantime, he warned that the cruel blockade of Gaza and acute shortage of medical aids are worrying and can lead to a human catastrophe. 'Helping the oppressed people of Palestine and preventing the Zionist regime from committing its atrocities are the common responsibility of all international organizations and freedom-loving countries of the world,' the Iranian president said. He pointed to the 'heroic' and 'legitimate' resistance of the people and resistance groups in Palestine, and said, 'Undoubtedly, the resilient and great nation of Palestine, with its indomitable will, will once again defeat the Zionist regime.'" http://t.uani.com/U6t3mL Opinion & Analysis George Perkovich in WashPost: "Uranium enrichment is the stickiest sticking point in the nuclear negotiations with Iran now underway in Vienna. The United States and its five partners want Iran to scale back the number and output of the centrifuges it operates and deploys in reserve, thereby extending the time it would take to 'break out' and construct a bomb. Iran says it could delay expanding its enrichment capacity for a few years but ultimately needs to scale up to produce replacement fuel for its Bushehr nuclear power reactor. Iranian negotiators maintain that they can't rely on Russia to continue supplying the fuel or give up Iran's centrifuge capability, given the high price that has been paid to acquire it - in sanctions and the assassination of its scientists. It is difficult to find international nuclear experts who are convinced by the argument that Iran needs an ¬industrial-scale enrichment program for Bushehr. Russia is fulfilling its contractual obligation to supply fuel through 2021 and wants to continue doing so thereafter, and Iran does not possess the intellectual property necessary to design and produce the fuel this reactor requires. If Iran did introduce self-made fuel into the reactor, its Russian warranties would no longer apply. While it is understandable that a proud country such as Iran would want to operate independently, no other country at such an early stage of nuclear development has been self-sufficient in this area. The key to resolving this impasse is to prove that Iran can rely on Russian-made fuel to operate Bushehr without interruption, which would enable Iranian leaders to discontinue premature and uneconomical industrial-scale enrichment. To this end, Russia and the other negotiating states should offer to send, on a rolling basis and starting as soon as possible, several years' worth of Bushehr fuel to Iran. Such fuel, if kept under constant safeguards by the International Atomic Energy Agency, would not feasibly enable a breakout. With fuel stockpiled, Iranian technicians could focus on research and development to produce more efficient centrifuges to make fuel for future, indigenously built Iranian power plants. Iran's leaders could proclaim that they cleverly traded first-generation centrifuges to obtain their four main goals: to secure the 'right' to enrich; to secure fuel for Bushehr; to create the basis for an advanced Iranian nuclear power program; and to relieve sanctions. If Iran's leaders said no to a deal along those lines, the Iranian public and the rest of the world would conclude that something other than peaceful requirements was at issue." http://t.uani.com/1s2Gen3 Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.