Potential Iran nuclear deal: what John Kerry faces in convincing Congress

Washington: Secretary of State John Kerry sets out this week to convince Congress that it should not place new roadblocks in the way of a two-step plan that world powers are trying to conclude with Iran over its nuclear programme.

But Secretary Kerry’s task is not an easy one: France, one of the parties to the negotiations with Iran, has called the plan “a fool’s game” that leaves Iran too much leeway to pursue its nuclear ambitions. And the Israelis have exhorted American Jewish groups to pressure Congress to do what it can to discourage US support for an interim agreement.

The first step of this plan would basically curtail some of Iran’s nuclear activity in exchange for some reversible relief from harsh economic sanctions – but would leave the building blocks of both Iran’s nuclear programme and the international sanctions in place.

Negotiators would then have six months to work out a comprehensive deal to verifiably block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon in exchange for a lifting of the international sanctions ravaging Iran’s economy.

Yet if anything, Congress wants to ramp up sanctions, not soften them at this point, asserting that only more economic hardship can persuade Iran to shut down and dismantle its nuclear program.

The deep scepticism that Kerry can expect to encounter among members of Congress was on display when Senator Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday that he feared the administration was “going to deal away the leverage that we have” with Iran.

Using a cautionary comparison that has become a staple of critics of a phased-in agreement with Iran, Senator Corker said: “A partial agreement leads us down the same path we went down with North Korea.”

Over a two-decade period, North Korea agreed to plans and in some cases took steps toward ending its nuclear programme. But it later disavowed the agreements, in February, it announced it had conducted its third nuclear test in recent years.

Kerry will also find that concern over the proposed first-step partial agreement is far from a Republican monopoly. New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement Friday he is “deeply troubled” that the initial agreement would call for Iran to take some immediate steps to curtail its nuclear activities – but not to halt all uranium enrichment, for example.

Saying he wants any first step to achieve “much more,” Representative Engel noted that United Nations Security Council resolutions demand a halt to Iran’s enrichment activities.

Highly enriched uranium is one means of fuelling a nuclear bomb. Iran is not known to have created highly enriched uranium, but it is stockpiling lower levels of enriched uranium that could eventually be purified to weapons-grade uranium.

High-ranking officials from six world powers – the US, China, Russia, Britain, France, and Germany – met with Iranian officials in Geneva last week and appeared by Sunday morning to have come tantalisingly close to reaching a deal that has eluded the international community for the past decade.

But last-minute balking on both sides put off any deal signing, although the parties agreed to try again with a fresh round of talks November 20.