WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats on Thursday blocked a Republican effort to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal, delivering the Obama administration a long-awaited, major foreign policy victory.
But with Republicans in both chambers dead set on taking further shots to eviscerate the deal, and potentially even drag it to court to block its implementation, the Iran deal debate may not be over.
The vote on the procedural motion was 58 to 42, falling two votes short of the 60 votes needed to consider the resolution rejecting the agreement.
Meanwhile, the House on Thursday evening passed, 245 to 186, a resolution stating that President Barack Obama didn’t fulfill his obligations under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act because Congress has yet to see two confidential side agreements pertaining to the deal — documents the administration says it doesn’t have. The resolution also stated that the 60-day clock for Congress to approve the deal hasn’t started.
But despite the House vote (and two more to come on Friday), the Senate action virtually assures that the deal will be implemented, at least in the short term. In recent days, the deal’s opponents secured the votes to override Obama’s promised veto. The successful filibuster of the resolution of disapproval now ensures Obama won’t have to rely on his veto pen to preserve a major piece of his foreign policy agenda.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the Senate will vote on the resolution of disapproval one more time before the Sept. 17 deadline to see “if any folks want to change their minds.” But he seemed to accept that there was no way to block its implementation via Congress.
“If we want to do anything further about this Iranian regime, bring me a bill with enough co-sponsors to override a presidential veto,” McConnell told his colleagues after Thursday’s vote. “Otherwise, the American people will give us their judgment about the appropriateness of this measure a year from November.”
But in the House, Republicans don’t want to wait until the election to take aim at the pact from another angle.
Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, on Thursday said House Republicans will “use every tool at our disposal to stop, slow and delay this agreement from being fully implemented,” including suing Obama to keep him from carrying out the deal. “That is an option that is very possible,” Boehner said.
A lawsuit would be a potentially dramatic postscript to a long fight over green-lighting the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for easing economic sanctions on the rogue nation — a fight that has been in its final hours ensnared by procedural jockeying in both chambers of Congress.
Republican lawmakers, and some Democrats, have been asking to see two confidential side agreements, struck between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The administration argues it can’t produce them because it never had the confidential documents.
On Friday, the House will take up a measure to prevent Obama from lifting sanctions on Iran. Then, it will likely reject an approval resolution for the entire deal that “is about holding every member accountable for their vote,” Boehner said.
Now that efforts to block the deal through a disapproval resolution have faltered, many House conservatives are agitating for their Senate counterparts to follow their lead.
“I’d like to see the Senate actually go nuclear on this,” said Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho.
But Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., indicated there isn’t much interest among Senate Republicans in taking steps to formally assert that Obama is in violation of his obligations under the law.
Democrats, meanwhile, are frustrated and impatiently waiting to declare victory.
“It’s time that we move on to something else. This matter is over,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said after Thursday’s vote. “You can continue re-litigating, but it’s going to have the same result.”
How Gardner and Bennet voted
Colorado’s senators split along party lines with Republican Cory Gardner opposing the Iran deal, while Democrat Michael Bennet supported it. Both explained their votes on the Senate floor on Thursday.
“This doesn’t end the nuclear program as the President stated was his goal, it continues it. It paves a patient pathway to an industrial nuclear complex in Iran. With the blessings of the world community, a flourishing economy, a lifting of the conventional arms embargo, a lifting of the ballistic missile embargo. And that’s a good deal for us?” Gardner said.
“The agreement doesn’t eliminate the deep concerns I hold about Iran’s horrific acts of terror and its hegemonic pursuits. But all of Iran’s malevolent acts would only be more dangerous if backed by a nuclear weapon,” said Bennet.
