Democrats and Republicans say U.S. pay more attention to Iran regime’s behavior

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Concerns about the Iranian regime’s behaviour exist in both chambers of Congress, where some of the President Obama’s strongest allies on the nuclear deal are joining some of his sharpest critics to demand a concerted response to the missile tests by Tehran, the Washington Post reported.

While Washington is focused on how to combat and protect the country from the Islamic State, some Democrats say that President Obama and his administration should be paying more attention to Iran, which reportedly conducted new ballistic missile tests in November, the report said.

“I understand that most of Congress and the administration are very distracted by the global refugee crisis, by the terrorist attacks in Paris, by our conflicts with ISIS,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) “The reality is with this deal, I’m on the administration’s side, but they need to be doing more…. We have to have a menu of responses that we and our allies have agreed on and that we will take. Or the Iranians will pocket it and keep moving.”

Republicans — including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who opposed the nuclear pact — openly worry that if the Obama administration doesn’t punish Iran now, it will fail to castigate it in the future for any infractions of the Iran deal, which Congress failed to reject before a Sept. 17 deadline.

“Iran violates U.N. Security Council resolutions because it knows neither this administration nor the U.N. Security Council is likely to take any action,” Corker said this week. “If we cannot respond to a clear violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution, I have no faith that the U.N. and the Obama administration will implement any form of snapback in response to the Iranian violations of the nuclear agreement.”