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| us-congres |
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.”
