(TheLibertyRevolution.com)- Officials within the Biden administration have said recently that they are cautiously optimistic about a forthcoming agreement between the United States and Iran that would see both countries return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, of JCPOA.
But, some Republican senators, led by Ted Cruz, have vowed that they would block that action if President Joe Biden tried to reinstate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
On Monday, Cruz and 31 other GOP senators wrote a letter to Biden saying the White House would be required to submit any agreement made with Iran’s nuclear program to Congress for review.
The letters states that any submission of such documents would then trigger a review by Congress and “includes the possibility of Congress blocking implementation of the agreement.”
The Biden administration has been saying that when former President Donald Trump backed out of the deal in 2018, it convinced Iran to start building up the nuclear material it had. The. White House says that first happened in 2019.
Trump withdrew from the Iran deal in 2018 and then re-imposed sanctions that the deal had lifted. While the U.S. was no longer part of the deal at that point, other nations such as Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, China and the European Union all remained in it.
Supporters of that move by the former president says the U.S. needs to be constantly putting “maximum pressure” on Iran until they abandon all of their aggressive behaviors and nuclear ambitions. Other examples include supporting terrorist proxies and their attacks, and their missile proliferation.
In their letter to Biden, Cruz and the other Republicans argued that the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act mandates that the White House submit documents for evaluation to Congress “any agreement related to the nuclear program with Iran.”
The letter continued:
“As a threshold matter, we reiterate our view that any agreement with Iran regarding its nuclear program is of such gravity for U.S. national security that by definition it is a treaty requiring Senate advice and consent.
“The submission of such materials then triggers a statutorily-defined review process, and includes the possibility of Congress blocking implementation of the agreement.”
But, Biden’s supporters say that Congressional review under the INARA doesn’t apply in this case, since the White House would only be returning to an original agreement that was already in place and underwent a thorough review by Congress when it was initially passed.
As the executive director of the Arms Control Association, Daryl Kimball, commented to The Hill:
“I do not expect that the administration will say ‘this is a new agreement and Congress has the authority under INARA to review it all over again,’ because this is all about how the two parties implement an existing agreement.”
That being said, it seems as though the Biden administration is about to have a fight on their hands if they do make progress on a return to the Iran nuclear deal.
In addition to Cruz and the other Republican senators, there are members of the Democratic Party who want the U.S. to take a strong-armed approach with Iran.
