Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) has a simple message: Diplomacy with Tehran stands a high chance of failure unless the United States reinforces it with the threat of devastating economic pressure.
That’s a common-sense argument — but one that Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) prefer to ignore.
Along with Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill), Menendez has authored the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2015, which would impose sanctions on Iran if the regime fails to negotiate an acceptable agreement on its nuclear program before the latest deadline (June 30).
Sanctions, the senators argue, brought Iran to the negotiating table; the threat therefore must continue in order to push Tehran to compromise. But President Obama says he’d veto the legislation, arguing that it would torpedo the talks.
Yet overwhelming majorities in Congress have long understood that a single-track diplomatic process without the backing of economic pressure is unlikely to motivate Tehran to actually agree to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
After all, the November 2013 interim agreement known as the Joint Plan of Action not only allowed the regime to preserve the bulk of its nuclear infrastructure, but also contained enough loopholes to enable Tehran to advance the program without technically violating the deal.
Schumer has done the right thing; he’s co-sponsoring this year’s bill. But Gillibrand and Booker still buy the administration’s claims.
These flaws made prospective sanctions even more vital. Without them, Tehran can simply wait out the clock, stringing out the talks as it advances its illicit nuclear program, knowing that it will face no meaningful consequences for doing so.
Thus, in December 2013, Menendez and Kirk introduced their first Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act, the precursor to the bill now pending in the Senate. But Gillibrand and Booker, as well as Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), helped shoot it down.
Mind you, all three senators supported the bill at first, even becoming original cosponsors.
But a White House full-court press accused the measure’s proponents of pursuing a “march toward war” — and those three, and other Senate Democrats, folded. Gillibrand publicly relented in a statement to the Huffington Post. Booker and Schumer quietly went along.
A year later, history is largely repeating itself. The new version of the bill, which reflects the unhappy reality that Iran has barely budged in its negotiating positions in the 14 months since the interim agreement, faces a fresh Obama veto threat.
At the same time, an increasingly frustrated Sen. Menendez, in a statement that stunned Washington, has described the administration’s arguments as “talking points that come straight out of Tehran.”
Schumer has done the right thing; he’s co-sponsoring this year’s bill. But Gillibrand and Booker still buy the administration’s claims. She quietly announced her opposition in a statement to CNN; Booker is maintaining radio silence.
What’s most troubling here is that Booker and Gillibrand have talked tough in the past.
In her six years in the Senate, Gillibrand has consistently supported sanctions legislation.
In 2010, she argued that sanctions “will show Iran that until they halt their nuclear development, they will not have any access to the global economy, and neither will any company doing business with Iran.” Sanctions can also “bolster engagement,” she said, by making “an impact on Iran’s decision-makers.”
Similarly, on his campaign Web site, Booker voiced concern that Tehran’s openness to negotiations may be “a delaying tactic to continue nuclear development” and noted that sanctions “must continue while there is time.”
Gillibrand and Booker should reconsider. As the senior senator from New Jersey has observed, eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat requires an approach that doesn’t echo talking points from Tehran.
Tzvi Kahn is a senior policy analyst at the Foreign Policy Initiative.