Divided on Iran, Democrats Unite Against GOP Letter

When it comes to Ir­an, the Sen­ate has its Re­pub­lic­an hawks and its Demo­crat­ic hawks. But only the former thought it would be a good idea to send a let­ter to Tehran warn­ing it against cut­ting a nuc­le­ar deal with the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion, and now those in the lat­ter camp aren’t happy about it.

A total of 47 Re­pub­lic­ans signed a let­ter to Ir­an’s lead­ers, warn­ing that any deal with Pres­id­ent Obama might not out­last his pres­id­ency. On an is­sue that di­vides them, Demo­crats ap­pear united in their re­sponse—in­clud­ing some mem­bers who have been will­ing to break pub­licly with the White House.

Sen. Robert Men­en­dez, the Sen­ate For­eign Re­la­tions Com­mit­tee’s rank­ing mem­ber, said the Ir­a­ni­ans don’t need a let­ter “to be told that which they know about our gov­ern­ment, that this gov­ern­ment, mean­ing the Con­gress, will have a say at some point.”

“As far as I am con­cerned, you saw that it was a par­tis­an let­ter, [that] tells you everything about it,” said Men­en­dez. (The New Jer­sey Demo­crat re­portedly faces fed­er­al cor­rup­tion charges, and some Re­pub­lic­ans—in­clud­ing Sen. Ted Cruz—have even sug­ges­ted that Men­en­dez is be­ing pun­ished by the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion for his po­s­i­tion on Ir­an.)

(RE­LATED: For Demo­crats on Ir­an, Tim­ing is Everything)

Men­en­dez and Sen­ate For­eign Re­la­tions Com­mit­tee Chair­man Bob Cork­er have put forth a bill that would re­quire a con­gres­sion­al re­view of any nuc­le­ar agree­ment with Ir­an. The Re­pub­lic­ans’ let­ter doesn’t ne­ces­sar­ily make it harder to sup­port this bill, said Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. “I think the tim­ing on that is the crit­ic­al part—when we take it up,” said Cardin, a Sen­ate For­eign Re­la­tions Com­mit­tee mem­ber.

Fresh­man Sen. Tom Cot­ton, R-Ark., led the charge on craft­ing the let­ter, which was signed by all but sev­en of the up­per cham­ber’s Re­pub­lic­ans. The let­ter, ori­gin­ally re­por­ted by Bloomberg, says Obama will “leave of­fice in Janu­ary 2017, while most of us will re­main in of­fice well bey­ond then—per­haps dec­ades,” and if Con­gress doesn’t ap­prove the agree­ment, the next pres­id­ent could “re­voke such an ex­ec­ut­ive agree­ment with the stroke of a pen.”

The frus­tra­tions over the let­ter come a week after some Demo­crats, in­clud­ing at least eight sen­at­ors, boy­cot­ted a Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Net­an­yahu’s speech to a joint ses­sion of Con­gress that urged the United States against strik­ing a nuc­le­ar weapons deal with Ir­an.

(RE­LATED: Net­an­yahu De­livered Just What Obama Feared)

Cork­er said his fo­cus is on get­ting the bill through the cham­ber, and his sig­na­ture was no­tice­ably ab­sent from the let­ter sent to Ir­a­ni­an lead­ers. Cot­ton called him over the week­end, Cork­er said, to let him know the let­ter was go­ing out.

“We had a very civil con­ver­sa­tion, and I ap­pre­ci­ated the fact that he called be­fore he sent it out,” Cork­er told re­port­ers Monday. “He un­der­stands that my role in this is a little dif­fer­ent and unique and re­spec­ted it.”

Still, some Demo­crats say the let­ter politi­cizes for­eign re­la­tions and makes com­prom­ise among the two parties tough­er. Crit­ics on Monday in­cluded Sen­ate Minor­ity Lead­er Harry Re­id and Minor­ity Whip Dick Durbin. The let­ter is “un­pre­ced­en­ted,” “rep­re­hens­ible,” and plays polit­ics with for­eign re­la­tions, Demo­crats say, and Re­pub­lic­ans are try­ing to cut the legs out from Obama as he at­tempts to forge a deal with Ir­an over the coun­try’s nuc­le­ar pro­gram.

(RE­LATED: Harry Re­id Goes Off on Re­pub­lic­ans Over Ir­an Let­ter)

“I can’t even ima­gine the up­roar if Demo­crat­ic sen­at­ors [had been] writ­ing to Sad­dam Hus­sein in the lead up to the Ir­aq War,” Sen. Chris Murphy of Con­necti­c­ut told Na­tion­al Journ­al. “So my hope is that this gal­van­izes Demo­crats be­hind an ef­fort to sup­port ne­go­ti­ations, be­cause Re­pub­lic­ans have made it crys­tal clear that this has noth­ing to do with the mer­its of the deal. This has everything to do with un­der­min­ing the pres­id­ent.”

That doesn’t mean law­makers won’t sup­port sanc­tions on Ir­an if the ad­min­is­tra­tion fails to reach an agree­ment.

“If the ne­go­ti­ations fall apart, I sup­port im­pos­ing new sanc­tions,” Murphy said, “and the only dif­fer­ence with­in the Con­gress is wheth­er you pass le­gis­la­tion now or you pass le­gis­la­tion after the ne­go­ti­ations fall apart, so I think we’re all pretty uni­fied in the fact that if ne­go­ti­ations don’t work then we’re go­ing to move for­ward on a new round of sanc­tions.”

“I don’t think there’s any ques­tion,” Cardin said, “that if there’s no agree­ment, there’s go­ing to be tough­er sanc­tions. I don’t think there’s any ques­tions about that, and the ad­min­is­tra­tion will sup­port us on it.”