Senators Demand Missing Iran Nuke Deal Documents From Administration

Admin Wed 22 Jul 2015 - 23:28

Senators Demand Missing Iran Nuke Deal Documents From Administration
by TheTower.org Staff | 07.22.15 12:11 pm
Senators Bob Corker (R – Tenn.) and Ben Cardin (D – Md.), the two highest ranking members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, insisted to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in a meeting today that the Obama administration must turn over missing documents related to the nuclear deal agreed to with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that have not yet been transmitted to their committee, The Hill reported.
Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and ranking member Ben Cardin (D-Md.) huddled with Moniz to discuss “two documents that are not delivered to us that we’d like to have,” Corker said.
Those two documents were in addition to the formal Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, annexes and related materials that the State Department sent lawmakers on Sunday, Corker said. The transmission of that plan started the clock on Congress’s 60-day window to review the deal and potentially vote to kill it. …
One of the documents pertained to Iran’s Parchin military complex, Corker said. The other related to “a side agreement that Iran has with the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency].”
Congress was supposed to receive the complete text of the JCPOA and documents related to the deal from the administration earlier this week, as it begins sixty days of deliberations on the merits of the deal. The debate period was mandated by the Corker-Menendez bill, which overwhelmingly passed both houses of Congress in May.
Corker and Cardin criticized President Obama last week, writing in an open letter to him that his decision to submit the JCPOA to the United Nations Security Council before Congress voted on it “would be contrary to your statement that ‘it’s important for the American people and Congress to get a full opportunity to review this deal…our national security policies are stronger and more effective when they are subject to the scrutiny and transparency that democracy demands.’” Historian Walter Russell Mead wrote that going to the Security Council first was “essentially abrogatin the treaty power of Congress.”
In April, a poll found that sixty-five percent of Americans supported Congressional review of the nuclear deal.