U.S. President Barack Obama’s hopes of preserving the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers were dealt a setback on Thursday when Sen. Chuck Schumer, one of the top Democrats in the Senate, said he would oppose the agreement. Schumer’s opposition, announced in a lengthy statement, could pave the way for more of Obama’s fellow Democrats to come out against the nuclear pact announced on July 14 between Iran and six world powers, including the United States.
The New York senator is among the most influential Jewish lawmakers in the United States. He was the first Senate Democrat to announce his opposition to the agreement.
Another influential Jewish lawmaker, Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, also said on Thursday he would oppose the nuclear pact, in a statement obtained by Reuters.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing U.S. lawmakers to oppose the nuclear agreement, which he views as a threat to Israel’s survival. Some pro-Israel groups have also been spending millions of dollars on an advertising campaign to push members of Congress to vote against the deal.
Opposition to the deal is almost solid from Republicans arguing that the U.S. gave away too much in negotiations, and from many Democrats sympathetic to Israel, which considers the pact a disaster.
It is nearly certain that the Republican-controlled Congress will reject the deal, and that Obama will veto that bill. That means the suspense is over whether Obama can corral enough Democratic support to sustain his veto and keep the agreement alive.
Obama has been engaged in his own lobbying effort, including a combative speech on Wednesday in which he said abandoning the agreement would open up the prospect of war.
The U.S. Congress has until Sept. 17 to consider a resolution of disapproval of the Iran deal, which would eliminate Obama’s ability to waive all sanctions on Iran imposed by the U.S. Congress, a key component of the agreement.
Lawmakers will begin debating whether to reject the deal when they return from their August recess on Sept. 8.
Schumer insisted he was not influenced by party or politics and had not been pressured.
“Advocates on both sides have strong cases for their point of view that cannot simply be dismissed. This has made evaluating the agreement a difficult 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,” he said.
Obama has promised a veto if the resolution is passed by the House and Senate.
Republicans would need at least 13 Democrats in the Senate and 44 in the House to vote against Obama to muster the two-thirds majorities in both chambers needed to override a veto. So, while Thursday’s announcements are a blow to the president, opponents of the deal still face an uphill battle to enact a disapproval resolution.
Several Democrats in both the House and Senate have already come out in favor of the nuclear deal, including Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader. Schumer’s colleague from New York, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, announced her support for the agreement on Thursday.
A handful of House Democrats in addition to Engel have said they oppose the deal, including Rep. Steve Israel, a member of the chamber’s Democratic leadership.
Schumer said lawmakers would come to their own conclusions but he would try to persuade other senators to vote against the Iran deal. Schumer is currently the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate and is in line to succeed Harry Reid as the party’s leader in the chamber when Reid retires in early 2017.
A congressional aide said Engel would vote for a resolution of disapproval and also vote to override an Obama veto if the resolution passes Congress. However, Engel did not say he would lobby against the deal among other lawmakers.
Schumer’s opposition was first reported by the Huffington Post. He said in his statement he opposed the nuclear deal because he believed Iran would not change and that the deal would let it eliminate sanctions while retaining “nuclear and non-nuclear power.”
“Better to keep U.S. sanctions in place, strengthen them, enforce secondary sanctions on other nations, and pursue the hard-trodden path of diplomacy once more, difficult as it may be,” Schumer said.
The White House had no immediate comment on Schumer’s announcement, which was distributed by the Senate Republican leadership after it was released by his office.
The liberal group MoveOn.org said its 8 million members would organize a “donor strike” to withhold campaign contributions from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as well as “any Democratic candidate who succeeds in undermining the president’s diplomacy with Iran.”
Senate leader to Obama: Stop demonizing Iran deal opponents
Meanwhile, Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that Obama was treating his drive to win congressional support for the deal like a political campaign, making attacks on opponents that need to stop.
McConnell’s comments came as the Senate dispersed for the summer recess, which both sides in the dispute plan to use to shore up support for showdown votes next month. They followed a tumultuous early debate over the nuclear agreement.
Obama so far “is treating this like a political campaign,” McConnell told reporters. “Demonize your opponents, gin up the base, get Democrats all angry and, you know, rally around the president. To me, it’s a different kind of issue.”
The majority leader has said he wants senators to spend next month’s debate over the Iran deal planted in their seats—an unusual step, underscoring the issue’s gravity.
“It’s those hard-liners chanting ‘Death to America’ who have been most opposed to the deal,” Obama said of Tehran demonstrators in a speech Wednesday, defending the multi-nation agreement. “They’re making common cause with the Republican caucus.”
McConnell pointedly objected to those remarks, saying, “The president ought to treat this like a serious national security debate rather than a political campaign, and tone down the rhetoric and talk about the facts.”
McConnell further criticized Obama’s characterization of the deal in the speech, saying it was “absurd” to argue that lawmakers must essentially choose between the agreement and going to war.
Obama made a “huge mistake” with that argument, McConnell told reporters.
“It’s not this deal versus war. That’s the argument they’ve been making during the whole negotiation. It’s either this deal or a better deal, or more sanctions,” he said.
In his address Wednesday, Obama said that if the Republican-controlled Congress blocked the deal, it would accelerate Tehran’s path to a nuclear bomb.
“Let’s not mince words. The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon,” Obama said.
But McConnell was not buying it. “That’s an absurd argument,” he said.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker similarly criticized Obama’s comments, saying, “He’s trying to shut down debate by saying those who have questions, legitimate questions, are somehow unpatriotic, are somehow compared to hardliners in Iran.”
In recent weeks, some Republicans have pulled no punches to criticize Obama over the agreement, which would lift sanctions on Iran in exchange for Tehran mothballing its ambitions to build a nuclear weapon for at least a decade.
Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz said the pact would make the Obama administration “the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism,” because lifting the sanctions would restore money to Iran that it could use to support the terrorist groups it sponsors.
Another Republican presidential contender, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, said Obama is marching Jews “to the door of the oven”—a reference to the Holocaust and Israel’s strong opposition to the agreement.
On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain, a leading Republican, said of Obama, “He’s carrying on in the finest traditions of Neville Chamberlain,” the British prime minister best known for unsuccessfully trying to appease Germany’s Adolf Hitler before World War II.
Meanwhile, renowned lawyer Alan Dershowitz wrote in USA Today that according to precedent, the Iran deal should require a majority vote of support in the House and the Senate to be considered legally binding.
By Yoni Hersch, Erez Linn/Israel Hayom Staff
