Schumer, a top Senate Democrat, opposes Iran nuclear deal

“This has made evaluating the agreement a hard and deliberate endeavor, and after deep study, careful thought and considerable soul-searching, I have decided I must oppose the agreement and will vote yes on a motion of disapproval”.

Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, one of the most influential Jewish voices in Congress, announced that he will oppose President Obama’s Iran deal.

“It would be best to use this historic opportunity to win the valuable trust of the Iranian nation”, Zarif said. That would present Schumer and other Democrats voting against the deal with a decision over whether to support an effort to override such a veto. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) did the same Thursday afternoon.

U.S. Representative Eliot Engel, top democrat on U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced he will oppose Iran nuclear deal, on Thursday.

He said he feared that after agreeing to the deal, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would “lean right” and give hard-liners more resources to pursue “even more harmful military and terrorist actions”.

“The President needs to retract his weird and preposterous comments, and both supporters and defenders of the President’s deal with Iran should reject this offensive rhetoric”, McConnell said. Republicans, who control the House and Senate, are uniformly opposed to the deal. Kirstin Gillibrand, Schumer’s New York Democrat colleague, announced they’d back the deal.

“Characterizing people who may be in opposition to the agreement as wanting to go to war as an alternative, I’m not comfortable with that, and I wish the White House wouldn’t do that”, Hoyer said in an interview in Jerusalem on Thursday.

Within the Home, no less than 5 Democrats got here out in help of the plan on Wednesday following a serious speech by Obama defending it, CNN notes. Under the deal, Iran will maintain but limit its ability to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, keeping about a third of its 19,000 centrifuges capable of separating the explosive uranium-235 isotope from uranium ore.

Schumer’s split with Obama is remarkable for a senior leader, the number three Democrat in the Senate and next in line to replace Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid when he retires in early 2017.

So far, 12 Senate Democrats and one Democratic-leaning independent, Sen.

In the past several days, a handful of fence-sitting Democrats have come out in support of the nuclear agreement – including Sens. Members of Congress will vote next month on a resolution either approving or disapproving the pact.

And he argued sanctions relief for Tehran would only serve to empower a hardline regime. Schumer posted a statement on the website Medium declaring his intention to vote no on the agreement, which Secretary of State John Kerry played a key part in negotiating.