WASHINGTON – Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the recently negotiated accord with Iran is the only chance to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and that failure to enact the agreement would isolate the United States internationally.
“If the U.S., after laboriously negotiating this multilateral agreement with five other partners, were to walk away from those partners, we’re on our own,” Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
A congressional rejection of the accord, Kerry said, would amount to “a great big green light for Iran to double the pace of its uranium enrichment, proceed full speed ahead with a heavy water reactor, install new and more efficient centrifuges and do it all without the unprecedented inspection and transparency measures that we have secured.”
“Everything we have prevented would then start taking place,” he said.
Kerry’s testimony, along with the testimony of Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, came as the Iran deal architects made their first public appearance before lawmakers ... since the accord was announced last week.
As Kerry sounded the diplomatic alarm in Washington, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran told his domestic critics of a deal that the alternative would be an economic “Stone Age.”
Speaking frankly about the toll crippling international sanctions have had on the Iranian economy, Rouhani said at a medical conference in Tehran, that a nuclear deal was precisely the reason he was elected two years ago.
Under congressional legislation, the administration submitted the accord to lawmakers for the 60-day review. President Barack Obama has said he will veto any congressional move to disapprove the accord.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the panel, said that he was “fairly depressed” by the confidential briefing lawmakers received Wednesday on the terms of the accord, and that administration officials had engaged in “hyperbole” by saying the choice was “between this deal and war.”
Far from blocking Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons, Corker noted, the accord would enable Iran to expand its nuclear enrichment capabilities after the first decade.
“I believe we have been fleeced,” he said.
Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md., said the agreement was stronger in some respects than the framework accord the negotiators drafted in Lausanne, Switzerland, in April.
“Our negotiators got an awful lot,” he said.
