WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama agreed on Wednesday to give the US Congress a say in the nuclear deal he is negotiating with Iran, but warned that he would veto the bill if more conditions were added.

The White House said President Obama would sign the compromise bill passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, although he was not “particularly thrilled” with it.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest also said the president would veto the bill if more conditions were added in the full Senate and the House.

The Obama administration opposed the bill till the very last moment and sent Secretary of State John Kerry to Capitol Hill to persuade Democratic senators not to vote for the proposal.

By Tuesday afternoon, it became clear that Secretary Kerry, who is a Senate veteran and also the chief US negotiator of the Iran nuclear deal, had failed in winning over the senators.

When the committee began the hearing late on Tuesday afternoon, the White House said President Obama would not veto the legislation because it had strong bilateral support. All 19 members of the Senate panel, including both Republicans and Democrats, voted for the bill.

The bill has weakened President Obama’s powers of negotiating the deal with Iran and also has the potential of derailing the negotiations. Tuesday’s vote followed a compromise between Republican and Democrat senators, which removed some of the conditions proposed in the original bill and also toned down its language.

The senators, however, voted against a proposed amendment that would have attached terrorism-related sanctions to a nuclear deal.

Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio withdrew a controversial amendment which demanded that Iran recognize Israel before sanctions were removed.

Other senators also dropped their amendments to maintain the bipartisan spirit.

According to observers, if this bipartisan spirit continued in the full Senate and the House, it would be difficult for President Obama to veto congressional measures.

The legislation requires the president to submit for congressional review the final nuclear agreement the US and its five negotiating partners reach with Iran.

The bill prevents the president from lifting congressionally mandated sanctions on Iran if lawmakers disapprove of a final agreement.

The review period, however, has been shortened from the proposed 60 days to an initial 30 days. If, at the end of the 30 days, Congress were to pass a bill on sanctions relief and send it to the president, an additional 12 days would be automatically added to the review period. This could be another 10 days of review if the president vetoed the relief proposal.

A last-minute compromise, worked out by the committee’s Republican chairman Bob Corker and its ranking Democrat Senator Ben Cardin, allowed the bill to pass.

It removed the main hurdle, a clause that would have required the White House to certify to Congress that Iran was not supporting terror in order to provide sanctions relief.

Removal of the certification clause was a major requirement for Democrats for supporting the bill.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play