Some congressional Republicans are already gearing up for a fight with the administration in response to the reports.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken denied recent reports that the U.S. and Iran are close to clinching a new deal to constrain Tehran’s nuclear program in return for American sanctions relief.
At the Council on Foreign Relations today, America’s top diplomat answered a question from CFR president Richard Haass about those reports, flatly saying that “there is no agreement in the offing, even as we continue to be willing to explore diplomatic paths.”
“We’ve been building up our deterrence, and we have been working closely with partners in the region to do just that, as well as continuing to take a whole variety of measures to push back against Iranian misbehavior in different areas, but there’s no agreement in the offing,” he added.
Blinken’s comments came amid several recent reports indicating that U.S. and Iranian officials are on the verge of a diplomatic breakthrough to ink a new agreement that would revive some key tenets of the deal that former president Donald Trump scrapped in 2018.
The New York Times characterized the ongoing, indirect talks between U.S. officials and their Iranian counterparts as intended to reach “an informal, unwritten agreement,” citing Israeli, American, and Iranian sources. Such an agreement would see Iran agreeing to halt its enrichment of uranium at 60 percent, ending its proxy attacks on American contractors, and opting against sending Russia ballistic missiles for use in its war against Ukraine. Iran would additionally release Americans it has held hostage. In turn, Washington would make billions of dollars in currently frozen assets available to Iran.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has characterized this framework as a “mini agreement” in his internal discussions with Israeli lawmakers, Axios’s Barak Ravid reported earlier this month.
The U.S., however, has assiduously denied that any such deal is taking shape. In addition to Blinken’s remarks this afternoon, principal deputy State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said that “rumors about a nuclear deal, interim or otherwise, are false and misleading.”
However, experts on all sides of the debate acknowledge that the administration sees a distinct political advantage to denying that it is seeking a formal agreement — even as it reportedly does just that.
A former Obama National Security Council official, Tess Bridgeman, said as much during a recent event hosted by the progressive advocacy group J Street, in comments leaked and posted to social media. “Something that is written down on a piece of paper for all sides to try to implement is a recipe for Congress making it impossible,” she said, explaining why the administration is highly unlikely to submit an agreement for congressional review.
Others say that that path raises legal questions. In a memo released this morning, Foundation for Defense of Democracy experts Behnam Ben Taleblu and Richard Goldberg wrote that implementing any agreement’s stipulations on sanctions relief unilaterally would likely violate the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, a law passed in 2015 that requires the president to submit such an arrangement to Congress.
They added that this could apply to two likely sources of sanctions relief, frozen funds currently held in Iraq and South Korea, and that a recent move by the Treasury Department freeing up some portion of funds tied up in Iraq might well implicate the law.
Some congressional Republicans are already gearing up for a fight with the administration in response to the reports. Senators Tom Cotton, Bill Hagerty, and John Boozman reintroduced legislation last week that would require the president to submit any sanctions relief involving Iran to a congressional vote.
The unilateral implementation of a new agreement could be catastrophic and would have far-reaching ramifications beyond freezing in the Iranian nuclear program’s recent gains, Goldberg and Taleblu warned in the memo.
“By enabling Iran to access $20 billion in freedup cash and increase its energy exports, the United States would be effectively underwriting Iran’s provision of drones to Russia for use against Ukraine; offering the Islamic Republic more resources to bolster its ballistic missile arsenal; facilitating expanded Russian sanctions evasion through Iran using tried-and-true tactics perfected by Tehran; tacitly green-lighting more plots to assassinate U.S. officials; and formally abandoning brave Iranian protestors, who deserve maximum support amid their national uprising, which is continuing despite the regime’s violent crackdown.”