Iran pact momentum builds as Powell, Wasserman Schultz hop on board
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) said the decision to support the Iran nuclear agreement was “gut-wrenching.” (Paul Sancya/AP)
September 6 at 4:43 PM
The Iran nuclear agreement gained more momentum Sunday as former secretary of state Colin Powell and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the Democratic National Committee, announcement their support.
Powell, secretary of state under President George W. Bush, called the agreement “a pretty good deal” that would reduce the threat of Iran gaining a nuclear weapon.
Iran’s nuclear program “has been thrown into a detour” making it less likely it can produce a nuclear weapon to be used against Israel or other countries, Powell said. “So that’s pretty good,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said the decision to endorse the agreement was the most difficult one she has made in nearly 23 years in elected office.
The Jewish lawmaker wrote in the Miami Herald that while she has concerns about the agreement, the deal “provides the best chance to ensure” security for the United States, Israel and other allies.
“Under the agreement, Iran will not be able to produce a nuclear bomb for at least 10 to 15 years,” she said, while the United States and its allies “will be able to more closely concentrate on stopping Iran’s terrorist activity.”
When she talked with Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on CNN, she choked up emotionally as she talked about the difficulty of the decision as a “Jewish mother” and the first Jewish woman elected to the House from Florida.
“There’s nothing more important to me as a Jew than to ensure that Israel’s existence is there throughout our generations,” she said. She added: “There is no way that we would be able to ensure that better than approving this deal.”
The White House has clinched the necessary number of vote commitments in the Senate to ensure that Congress will not torpedo the deal even if President Obama ends up having to veto a disapproval resolution set for a vote this week.
But with that support in hand and more piling up, the White House and congressional backers of the deal have begun aiming for a more ambitious goal: enough backers to bottle up the disapproval resolution in the Senate with a filibuster, preventing it from even coming to a final vote.
That effort suffered a setback on Friday as Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he opposed the deal.
Thirty-eight senators back the agreement, three votes shy of the 41 needed to filibuster a disapproval resolution and block it from passing.
Powell, who served as national security adviser under Reagan, invoked Reagan’s oft-quoted maxim that the West should “trust but verify” any agreements with the former Soviet Union.
“With Iranians, don’t trust but always verify,” Powell said.
Democrats have enough Senate votes to stifle Iran opposition
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) talks to the media on Capitol Hill in Washington in a Nov. 18, 2014, file photo. Manchin said Tuesday that he will oppose the Iran nuclear deal, breaking with his party. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
By Mike DeBonis September 8, 2015 at 12:59 PM
Three Democratic senators announced Tuesday they will vote in support of the nuclear deal with Iran, appearing to pave the way for a filibuster of Republican-led attempts to disapprove of the controversial agreement.
Pro-deal statements from Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) mean 41 senators are now publicly backing the deal, enough to keep a disapproval resolution from emerging from the Senate and making its way to President Obama's desk and forcing a veto.
A fourth Democrat making an announcement Tuesday morning, Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), said he would vote to disapprove of the deal.
The decisions come on the day lawmakers are reassembling after a month-long break, with the Iran deal at the top of a high-stakes list of September business. Six Democrats remained undecided at the close of the holiday weekend. With 38 senators already publicly in favor of the deal -- enough to sustain a presidential veto -- none of those senators was expected to derail it. But the question of whether Democrats would cobble together enough support to prevent a disapproval resolution from reaching Obama's desk has been closely watched on Capitol Hill.
At the White House, press secretary Josh Earnest said the administration felt "gratified" by the growing support for the Iran nuclear deal, and he suggested that the White House expects Democratic supporters to filibuster the vote to disapprove the accord.
Supporters "should take the necessary steps in Congress to prevent Congress from undermining the agreement," Earnest said. He noted that Republicans often filibustered legislation when the GOP was in the minority in the Senate.
Blumenthal, Peters and Wyden had long been considered possible opponents of the deal, given the opposition of the Israeli government and significant elements of the American Jewish community. Blumenthal and Wyden are Jewish, and Peters has close ties to Michigan's Jewish leadership; all have made comments critical of the deal since its announcement in July.
But all three said in separate statements Tuesday that the deal negotiated by President Obama in conjunction with international allies is, while imperfect, the best path forward.
“While this is not the agreement I would have accepted at the negotiating table, it is better than no deal at all," Blumenthal said.
Said Peters, "Despite my serious concerns with this agreement, I have unfortunately become convinced that we are faced with no viable alternative."
Manchin is the fourth Senate Democrat to oppose the deal, following Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), Robert Menendez (N.J.) and Ben Cardin (Md.). One senator, Maria Cantwell (Wash.), has not yet announced her position.
Manchin said in a statement that he "could not ignore the fact that Iran, the country that will benefit most from sanctions being lifted, refuses to change its 36-year history of sponsoring terrorism. ... I cannot gamble our security, and that of our allies, on the hope that Iran will conduct themselves differently than it has for the last 36 years."
He added that if Iran is caught violating the nuclear agreement, "I have grave doubts that we will have unified, committed partners willing to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."
Congress faces a tight timeline for taking action on the Iran deal. Under review legislation passed earlier this year, lawmakers have until Sept. 17 to weigh in for or against the agreement. The Senate is expected to take the first votes, which could come as soon as Thursday.
Ahead of that debate, both sides have been preparing for the possibility that a disapproval resolution might not emerge from the Senate. Republicans have decried the potential use of the filibuster, while Democrats have pointed out numerous occasions where Republicans filibustered important legislation.
Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) defended the deal in a Tuesday morning address at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington and laid out some of the procedural hurdles to be dealt with in the coming days. Democrats have already passed up one opportunity to bottle up the Iran opposition by agreeing to begin debate on the deal. But it will take 60 votes to close debate and quickly move to a final vote.
“Democrats have already agreed to forgo our opportunity to filibuster, and I’ve offered Leader McConnell the chance to go straight to a vote on passage of the resolution," he said. "But of course, as he has noted many times in the past, everything of importance in the Senate requires 60 votes. So passage will require 60 votes."
“There is no precedent in recent history for an issue of this magnitude getting consideration in the Senate without having to secure 60 votes," Reid added. "This is not about how any one leader manages the floor – this is a precedent stretching back decades."
Manchin's decision to oppose the deal stands as one of the few clear-cut victories for the anti-deal forces that had hoped to swing lawmakers' opinion during the August summer break, spending millions on TV and radio ads. Before leaving Washington, Manchin had indicated he was "leaning very strongly" in support of the agreement, as he put it in a July 26 appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation."
But public opinion in West Virginia, whose politics have trended increasingly conservative over the past two decades, was strongly against the deal, and Manchin undertook an unusually public deliberative process. On his Web site, he listed dozens of meetings, hearings and briefings he had participated in with key policymakers inside and outside the federal government. And he was virtually the only decided Democrat to take his decision directly to his constituents by holding town hall meetings in his home state.
[West Virginia is getting an up-close look at one undecided Democrat’s Iran agony]
About 500 attended a Thursday town hall in Charleston, and the opinions of those attendees ran strongly against the agreement. Many wore shirts declaring, "We Need a Better Deal." During the event, Manchin declared himself undecided, gave numerous facts and arguments both for and against the deal, and said whatever decision he made would be a close call.
"If anyone tells you they are 100 percent for this deal or 100 percent against this deal, they haven't read it," he said. "They haven't studied it. The best I could ever could be is 60 percent for, 60 percent against, and it'll probably come down, it'll be 51 percent for or against when I make the final decision."
Karoun Demirjian and David Nakamura contributed to this report.
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