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Reports: Iran Sanctions Legislation Clears Senate Hurdle, Now Has Majority Support

Journalists late on Tuesday conveyed counts showing that a majority of the Senate now supports bipartisan legislation that would impose new sanctions on Iran should Tehran cheat during an upcoming negotiation period or, at the conclusion of that period, refuse to put its nuclear program verifiably beyond use for weaponization. Reuters had already reported on Monday that the “Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013” had secured 48 Senate co-sponsors, up from the original mix of 13 Democrats and 13 Republicans who had put their names to the bill when it was announced on December 19.

“Expect that number to keep growing over next couple of days as folks who were out of town and staff get back in,” the aide said. The bill was introduced by Robert Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois. “We expect several Democrats to kind of cross the picket line and come on board this week,” the aide said.

Reporters Tuesday evening counted Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY) and John Hoeven (R-ND) as supporters 50 and 51. The White House has threatened to veto the legislation if it passes, with Obama administration officials insisting that it will derail ongoing negotiations with Tehran over the latter’s atomic activities. Supporters of the bill have countered that the U.S. lacks sufficient leverage to coerce Iran into meeting its international obligations to suspend uranium enrichment – an assessment explicitly granted by Secretary of State John Kerry – and that in any case the White House’s position is incoherent inasmuch as sanctions pressure is widely acknowledged to have brought Iran to the table in the first place. It also appears that the value of financial relief provided to Iran under the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) vastly exceeds the Obama administration’s public estimates, the upshot being that Washington’s bargaining position is substantially weaker than it might otherwise have been. Mark Dubowitz, executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), has further calculated that Iran desperately needs the JPA’s sanctions relief and quite literally can’t afford to abandon at least the initial round of negotiations.

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