Eye on Iran: Lawmakers Voice Skepticism on Iran Nuclear Deal

Join UANI           Top Stories NYT: "The Obama administration officials engaged in nuclear negotiations with Iran ran into a wall of skepticism at two congressional hearings on Tuesday, with members of both parties insisting on a vote on any final agreement with the Tehran government and administration officials strongly hinting that they have little intention of complying. The disagreements surfaced after Wendy R. Sherman, the under secretary of state for policy and the lead American negotiator with Iran, made the case that the four-month-long extension in negotiations agreed to by the administration, along with modest additional sanctions relief, were warranted 'because we have seen significant progress in the negotiating room.' Specifically, she said the progress had been made in discussions about redesigning a plutonium reactor so that it would not produce weapons-grade fuel and converting Iran's deep-underground uranium enrichment site, called Fordow, to another purpose. Yet Ms. Sherman also acknowledged that Iran has revealed few details of its suspected efforts to design a weapon to international inspectors, and she was vague on the question of how much Iran's capacity to enrich uranium would have to be degraded before a deal was considered acceptable." http://t.uani.com/XeFsqB Reuters: "The lead U.S. nuclear negotiator declined to give a final deadline on Tuesday for negotiating a final nuclear agreement with Iran, but said participants mean to finish the international talks at the end of the current four-month extension. 'Our intent is absolutely to end this on Nov. 24 in one direction or another. But what I can say to you is we will consult Congress along the way,' Wendy Sherman, the under secretary of State for political affairs, said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing... 'I've been skeptical of the Iranians' sincerity from day one. And I cannot say that I am any less skeptical today than I was six months ago,' said New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the Foreign Relations panel. Sherman declined to discuss in the public hearing how long a final comprehensive agreement with Iran, including invasive inspections of its nuclear facilities, should last. She said only, 'We believe the duration of this should be at least double-digits. And we believe it should be for quite a long time.' Several committee Republicans said they were unhappy with the status of the talks. 'The goalposts keep moving,' said one, Tennessee Senator Bob Corker who is the party's leader on the panel." http://t.uani.com/1ld4Kea Bloomberg: "Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the panel's top Republican, faulted Sherman for not committing to greater congressional consultation. 'It appears to me what you're saying is you're going to do whatever it is you wish to do,' Corker said. 'In essence, Congress is playing no role other than raising questions. I think that's a major lapse in our responsibilities.' Lawmakers also expressed frustration with talks that they said have dragged on without signs of a final deal, while giving Iran economic relief. 'I do not support another extension of negotiations,' said Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the committee's chairman. 'At that point, Iran will have exhausted its opportunities to put real concessions on the table and I will be prepared to move forward with additional sanctions.' While senators pushed Sherman to commit to ending the talks by Nov. 24, as currently planned, she stopped short of such a promise... Corker also asked Sherman whether the administration would waive sanctions for Iran without seeking congressional approval. While sanctions can't be eliminated without such approval, the president can issue a waiver by executive action. When Sherman said Congress would be consulted about any waivers, Corker replied, 'That is a zero commitment.'" http://t.uani.com/1kml69s     Nuclear Program & Negotiations AFP: "US officials pledged Tuesday that any deal struck with Iran would include a strict monitoring regime to thwart any bid by Iranian leaders to covertly try to develop nuclear weapons. But top US negotiator Wendy Sherman would not be drawn by lawmakers on whether Washington and its partners would seek to extend the complex talks beyond a new November 24 deadline. 'Transparency and monitoring is absolutely critical and core to any agreement. As I said, one of the pathways of greatest concern is, of course, covert action,' Sherman told the Senate Foreign Relations committee." http://t.uani.com/1uGJsPn Al-Monitor: "On July 29 the lead US Iran negotiator warned lawmakers that congressional action now that would threaten to impose new sanctions on Iran if a final nuclear deal is not reached in November could jeopardize the sensitive negotiations at a critical moment, and unravel the international coalition pursuing them. 'The administration believes quite strongly that at this moment in [the] negotiations, additional legislative action would potentially derail negotiations,' Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee July 29... But Sherman said while the administration would continue to consult Congress on the negotiations and that Congress has oversight responsibilities and would be called on to vote on any lifting of sanctions agreed in a final deal, the administration believes the executive branch has the authority to make the deal without Congressional approval. 'We believe strongly that any lifting of sanctions will require Congressional legislative action,' Sherman said in response to Corker. 'We cannot lift any sanctions without congressional action. We can suspend or waive under current legislative. We will not do so without conversations with Congress.' 'If you are asking if [we will] come to Congress  for action to affirm the comprehensive deal, we believe the executive branch [has the authority],'  Sherman said." http://t.uani.com/UKQQZb  Terrorism WSJ: "Iran's support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas has diminished significantly in the past three years, limiting Tehran's influence over talks to end the war in the Gaza Strip, according to U.S. and Israeli officials. But the longer the war between Israel and Hamas drags on, these officials said, there's growing concern that Tehran could try to increase arms shipments to Hamas. On Tuesday, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for the replenishing of Hamas's military arsenal. 'The Muslim world has a duty to arm the Palestinian nation by all means,' he said in a speech ending the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Iran's security services have historically been the largest supplier of arms and cash to Hamas, the Islamist group that gained control of Gaza in 2007 following an internal military conflict with the secular Palestinian party Fatah. Tehran is also the major backer of a second Palestinian militia, Islamic Jihad, which has joined Hamas in firing rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip over the past three weeks." http://t.uani.com/1ob6dBt Human Rights AP: "A senior Obama administration official on Tuesday called on Iran to release a Washington Post journalist and his wife, as well as two other Americans who were arrested in Tehran last week without explanation. 'There is absolutely no reason for this to occur,' Wendy Sherman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, said at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The arrest of the Post's Iran correspondent, Jason Rezaian, who holds U.S. and Iranian citizenship, has raised concerns, Sherman said. She said the State Department has used 'the appropriate channels, principally the Swiss,' to convey its message to the authorities in Tehran." http://t.uani.com/1xyVuGw Trend: "The spokesperson of Iran's foreign ministry, Marzieh Afkham has marked the U.S. administration as one of the major religious rights' violators in the world. The official made the statement while responding to the U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom Report for 2013, released on July 28. 'Growing Islamophobia in the United States, systematic discrimination against Muslims and imposing limitations on religious minorities' freedom in the U.S. community has turned the country into one of the major violators of religious rights,' Afkham said, Iran's official IRNA news agency reported on July 30. The U.S. State Department report, says Iran alongside with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Sudan in 2013 'put severe restrictions on members of religious groups that did not conform to the state-approved religions.'" http://t.uani.com/1tZNAWE Opinion & Analysis Suzanne Maloney in Brookings: "Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, will mark his first full year on the job next week, amidst troubling signs that his campaign pledge to solve Iran's most serious challenges may be facing new obstacles. The latest bad news from Iran was last week's confirmation that Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, who holds American as well as Iranian citizenship, and three other journalists had been detained. Coming only days after negotiators from Iran and six world powers were forced to extend the nuclear talks for an additional four months due to major unresolved difference between the sides, these developments raise questions about Iran's prospects and whether moderation of either its foreign policy or domestic environment remains a realistic near-term possibility. The storyline is troublingly familiar: there are at least three American citizens missing in Iran today, including two Iranian-Americans imprisoned unjustly, former Marine Amir Hekmati and Christian convert Saeed Abedini. And Rezaian's arrest summons to mind a slew of prior incidents involving individuals with American, Canadian or European citizenship, including hikers Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer, and Josh Fattal, Woodrow Wilson Center scholar Haleh Esfandiari, academics Kian Tajbakhsh and Ramin Jahanbegloo, and journalists Maziar Bahari and Roxana Saberi. The list goes on and on, and if it were extended to include Iranians arrested without cause simply for reporting the news or speaking their minds or associating with foreigners, the list would be so long that it would crash this website. Still, Washington pays particular attention whenever one of its own is seized in the sole country on earth where we have no direct diplomatic presence. There will be crisis meetings in various government offices to discuss what can be done, although the truth is that these cases perhaps come closest to confirming Ayatollah Khomeini's most famous aphorism: 'America cannot do a damned thing.' When an Iranian-American is seized by the system, the world's sole superpower is forced to fall back on the least satisfying instruments of diplomatic influence: eloquent statements from the podium, third-party consular inquiries, and quiet efforts through cooperative interlocutors... Each time a dual-national is arrested in Tehran, the media and the blogosphere seem determined to find an explanation. Why was this individual seized at this particular moment in time? What message are Iranian authorities trying to send with this arrest? Is this a move against Rouhani? A hard-liner gambit to undermine the nuclear talks? A warning to steer clear from a particular news story or professional association? The search for understanding is a natural one, given the opacity of the Iranian system: we are all simply trying to divine political intent from headlines and speeches and clerical Kremlinology. In these arrests, however, I would assert that there is no hidden message, no method to the madness other than unpleasant realities of authoritarian power. The simple explanation is this: the arrest of innocents and the routine violation of human rights in Iran are a function of this ruling system. Despite the sophistication of its society, the vibrancy of its debates, the trappings of competitive and representative politics, at the heart of the Islamic Republic is a police state. If its agents want to grab you, they can and they will and they need no excuse. Multiple intelligence and security organizations control a prison system whose reaches are not known to even its parliament and whose abuses are infamous. No one, not the most innocuous Western tourist or the most well-connected Iranian power-broker, is immune to its reach." http://t.uani.com/1rP46e7 UANI Outreach Coordinator Bob Feferman in Times of Israel: "In his oped titled 'Arsonists and Firefighters', New York Times columnist Tom Friedman asked, 'Who is setting the Middle East on fire?' Amazingly, Friedman's failed commentary is myopic in the way it fails to identify the Iranian regime as the primary antagonist in the region. Consider this fundamental fact: Since 2005, terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad have fired more than 13,000 rockets at Israeli cities. Has anyone in the western media bothered to ask where all of these rockets are coming from? There is one sovereign nation that should be held fully accountable for Gaza's suffering, and that is Iran. These rockets are financed by the Iranian regime, and it is time for the mainstream media to stop praising Iran for its new-found 'moderation.' There is nothing 'moderate' about financing terrorism in Gaza. Absent the endless Iranian supply of rockets to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the terrorists in Gaza would be left to throwing rocks, not rockets, and none of these tragic events would have ever happened. The formula for peace in Gaza is simple: No more matches or gasoline for the arsonists. No terrorist rocket fire on Israel, no Israeli response to rocket fire. After all, the thousands of rockets launched by terrorists at Israeli cities cannot be purchased at Walmart. These rockets have a distributor: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard corps (IRGC) acting on the orders of the Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader. Just this March, the Israeli Navy intercepted a Iranian ship with rockets that would have been transported across the Sinai Peninsula into Gaza. This intercept clearly fits into a pattern that has been going on for years while an indifferent world has remained silent... In addition to the long-range rockets smuggled into Gaza, the IRGC has provided Hamas and Islamic Jihad with the technological know-how to manufacture rockets in Gaza. With this in mind, it is no longer possible for critics to argue that Hamas-fired rockets do not cause any real damage to Israeli civilians. These rockets are lethal, they are destructive, and Iran has the blood of Israeli women and children on its hands. Iran is making more than mischief in Gaza- it is making war on civilians. A nuclear-armed Iran would be capable of even greater destruction, and the international community cannot afford to just sit on its hands and wait for the inevitable. Since its founding in 2008, the non-partisan advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) has been warning the world of the dangerous nexus between Iran's support for terrorists and its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iranian sponsorship of terrorism is detailed in UANI's new Veritas Project." http://t.uani.com/1qKULEq Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email Press@UnitedAgainstNuclearIran.com United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.