Kerry says deal limits Iran’s nuclear options

“What I think you’ve actually done in these negotiations is codify a perfectly aligned pathway for Iran to get a nuclear weapon just by abiding by this agreement“, Corker said.

Senior Republicans seized on the existence of the confidential roadmap agreements between Iran and the IAEA during acrimonious hearings on Capitol Hill where John Kerry, the US secretary of state, was accused of being “fleeced” by Iranian negotiators.

“Based on my reading [of the deal]”, Corker said, “I believe that you have crossed a new threshold in U.S. foreign policy”.

Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew continued to defend the Iran nuclear agreement in the face of heavy criticism from Republican members of the Committee on Foreign Relations.

Testifying before Congress for the first time since world powers and Iran reached a nuclear agreement with Tehran on July 14, Kerry ardently defended the administration’s negotiating team, saying, “believe me, they’re a savvy group of people and nobody pulled any wool over their eyes”.

“It isn’t a better deal, some sort of unicorn arrangement involving Iran’s complete capitulation”, Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Risch says it makes no sense to trust Iran to hold up its side of the deal.

Kerry also said that Obama has “made it crystal clear we will never accept a nuclear-armed Iran”.

Moreover, congressional disapproval would only result in retaining Iran sanctions established by Congress. All other sanctions would fall away as the U.N.-approved timetable progresses.

Given the political calculus, the Senate hearing wasn’t so much an attempt by Kerry to persuade Republicans to support the plan as it was an opportunity to reassure Democrats. President Obama could veto a rejection, which Congress would then need a two-thirds majority to overturn. “I think there’s a lot of tools at our disposal”, he told reporters, although he did not elaborate.

The senator observed how Kerry has recently claimed, over and over, that if Congress rejects this deal, the only option is war.

The Tennessee Republican recounted, in graphic detail, Iran’s maiming of American soldiers while making his case against the deal.

The deal would see Iran’s oil exports gradually resume and billions of dollars in frozen assets unblocked.

REP. TOM UDALL (D), New Mexico: And so people that have used the analogy that, like in a drug crime, you flush it down a toilet and it’s gone and we won’t be able to find it, that’s in fact been proven out, has it?

Marco Rubio said the deal was “fundamentally flawed” and would “weaken our national security and make the world a more unsafe place”. Republicans and Democrats critical of the accord probably have enough votes for a resolution to reject the deal, which Obama has said he would veto.

Uh, if he meant nuclear weapons program, he would have said it.

Rubio – who is considered to be in the top tier of GOP presidential candidates for 2016 – railed against the Obama administration’s deal during a Senate hearing and appeared to lay out his agenda if elected to the White House in 2016.