Democrats Have Iran Votes

Also Thursday, Obama sent a letter to Rep. Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, defending the deal and urging him to support it.

Pelosi’s comments came as Republicans sounded alarms over an AP report disclosing a secret agreement between Iran and the United Nations. Those critics have complained that the wider deal is unwisely built on trust of the Iranians, while the administration has insisted it depends on reliable inspections. The deal’s backers have been concerned that a 60-day congressional review period – about half of which has elapsed – could be used to gin up opposition and that bad press could throw a wrench in approval of the deal.

President Barack Obama vows to veto if the deal is voted down.

Republicans have already seized on the arrangement as a fresh argument in opposing the deal ahead of a September vote on the agreement.

“The president’s veto would be sustained” if the vote were held today, Pelosi said, adding she hopes it doesn’t get to that point. “I don’t know why they accepted it. I think the IAEA is probably getting a little desperate to settle this”. “We will sustain the veto”.

Even if the resolution of disapproval does pass the House and Senate, Obama has made clear he would veto it, focusing attention on efforts to override his veto.

That would take 146 House Democrats, and fewer than 60 have publicly declared their support so far. Doing so would require two-thirds votes in the House and the Senate, an outcome even Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has suggested is unlikely.

In the hours after the side deal became public two more Democratic senators – Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Ed Markey of Massachusetts – announced their support for the deal.

The draft worldwide Atomic Energy Agency arrangement has been the most dramatic global development to shake the debate around the deal since it was signed in mid-July.

The agreement governing the inspection of Parchin is separate from the wide-ranging inspections regime the IAEA will impose on other Iranian sites under the deal. The United States and the five other world powers were not party to it but were briefed by the IAEA and endorsed it as part of the larger package.

The topic of conversation was mostly the same, his workings with the Foreign Relations Committee, which he chairs, and the Iran nuclear deal.