President Obama has caved on too many of his own goals for stopping Iran’s nuclear program, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee charged Monday in a letter to the White House urging Mr. Obama to be ready to walk away from the negotiations.
Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who wrote the new law that requires Mr. Obama to submit any deal to Congress for approval, said recent reports about the direction of negotiations suggest Mr. Obama is giving up too many of the transparency and inspection checks that are needed to make sure Iran doesn’t backslide.
Mr. Corker said agreeing to a deal that would allow Iran to cheat is worse than no deal at all.
“As your team continues their work, if Iran tries to cross these few remaining red lines, I would urge you to please pause and consider rethinking the entire approach,” he wrote in his letter. “Walking away from a bad deal at this point would take courage, but it would be the best thing for the United States, the region and the world.”
The senator said it was “breathtaking” to see how much ground Mr. Obama and his fellow negotiating partners have given to Iran in the talks.
He said the president must insist on international inspectors having access “anytime, anywhere” if a deal is to be successful, and said even at this point Iran had backslid on a 2013 information-sharing agreement.
Mr. Obama is working toward an end-of-month deadline for finalizing a deal, based on an outline reached in early April. Yet there is disagreement about what that outline requires of Iran, with government officials from that nation disputing the U.S.’s claims.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.