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President Trump’s deal to lift sanctions on Iran and give it access to a $300 billion reconstruction fund has cast a glum mood over the Senate Republican conference, with GOP senators saying that many of their colleagues are in “dismay” and “somber” over the cost of the agreement.
Trump’s most vocal MAGA allies on Capitol Hill are defending the agreement as a potential breakthrough that could finally end Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.
But many more GOP senators are skeptical about reaching any real agreement with Iran, arguing that the United States doesn’t seem to have any real leverage in the talks.
While a handful of Republican senators have slammed Trump’s memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran in public statements, Senate sources say many more within the Senate GOP conference feel uncomfortable over the details of the agreement and pessimistic it will produce a satisfactory result.
“I think there is a high level of dismay in that room,” said a Republican senator, who requested anonymity to discuss what GOP colleagues were thinking about Trump’s Iran deal as they gathered for a lunch meeting in the Capitol Thursday.
The senator predicted that Congress won’t ever get a chance to vote on the matter because talks with Iran are unlikely to produce a signed agreement to end its nuclear program, a view that’s shared by other Republican senators.
“I think it’s unlikely that an agreement will be reached and signed,” the source said.
A second Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss the deflated mood among GOP colleagues described the Senate Republican reaction to the deal as “somber.”
“It was a somber mood, people are a little shell-shocked. All the money in this deal for Iran is going to be a real problem,” the senator said.
Many Republican senators feel aghast at the huge economic windfall Iran could receive from an immediate end of sanctions on oil exports, the unfreezing of its assets around the world and potential access to the $300 billion reconstruction fund.
GOP critics of the deal say the text of the agreement released this week fails to address Iran’s missile stockpile, which remains at 70 percent of its prewar capacity, according to a CIA assessment, and does nothing to bar Iran from funding its militant proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) on Thursday blasted the deal “as completely out of step with the president’s goals” of neutralizing the threat Iran poses to U.S. national security interests.
He said the huge potential payoff for Iran would dwarf the economic relief that Iran received under President Barack Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015, which Republicans, including Trump, criticized harshly at the time.
“Specifically, the $300 billion fund for the reconstruction and economic development of Iran – though not funded by U.S. taxpayers – would make Iran’s payoff under President Obama’s 2015 deal look like a pittance by comparison,” Wicker said in a statement Thursday.
The senior GOP senator argued that it would be “an error” to force Israel to withdraw from territory in Southern Lebanon that it occupied to create a buffer zone with the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah.
“I also oppose the U.S. lifting any sanctions on Iran, or unfreezing Iranian funds, in exchange for Iran’s mere agreement to negotiate for another 60 days,” he said.
Wicker said that Iran’s theocratic regime hasn’t renounced its slogan of “Death to America, Death to Israel” and would “invest every penny it receives to further that aim.”
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) told Fox News in an interview that he has “concerns” over key elements of the deal.
“I do have concerns that certain aspects of this deal are a step in the wrong direction,” he said, citing the agreements to lift sanctions on Iranian oil exports and to unfreeze of tens of billions of dollars in Iranian assets around the world.
Cotton also flagged the possibility that Iran could impose tolls on the Strait of Hormuz after the initial 60-day period the memorandum of understanding sets up for additional negotiations.
He estimated that based on its pre-war rates of production, Iran could reap $4.5 billion to $6 billion every month from the easing of sanctions.
“That’s a lot of money,” he said. “And we know that this terrorist revolutionary regime is not going to spend that money on daycares or on hospitals. They’re going to use it to rebuild their drone stockpiles, their missiles, to fund Hamas and to fund Hezbollah.”
Cotton said he recognized the political pressure on Trump to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and to lower oil and gas prices, but argued that the U.S. military has the capability of doing that without having to give Iran big concessions.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told reporters Thursday he’s glad the Strait of Hormuz is open and that oil prices are already coming down, but expressed concern about funneling tens of billions of dollars to Iran when it hasn’t renounced its support of militant proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
“I think gas prices coming down is a good thing. I hope fertilizer prices in my state will soon follow. I think getting the strait reopened is good,” he said.
But Hawley warned: “I would not want to give them money.”
“I just think that this is a terrorist regime. They’ve killed a lot of Americans, they love to do that. They’re very evil people and I wouldn’t want to give them money,” he said.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) on Thursday expressed concern about Iran’s access to a $300 billion reconstruction fund.
“I have to know where that money is coming from because I don’t think my constituents are going to be really happy about it if that’s all U.S. taxpayer dollars,” she said.
Administration officials have assured some GOP senators in private conversations that none of the money from the reconstruction fund would come from the U.S. Treasury.
Ernst also expressed concern about the similarities between Trump’s deal and the agreement Obama negotiated in 2015.
“I don’t want to see JCPOA 2.0,” she said.
Several other Republican senators on Thursday questioned how much leverage the United States has to pressure Iran to give up its uranium enrichment program, which has produced 440 kg of “weapons grade” uranium.
Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) said sanctions against Iran “should probably snap back on at the earliest opportunity.”
“It’s unclear how we’re going to get a positive outcome with the leverage that we’ve been able to achieve in recent weeks,” he said.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also raised questions about how likely the Trump administration is to come away with an agreement to end Iran’s nuclear enrichment after the 60-day negotiating period set by the MOU.
“It’s tough to say that the agreement is one that leaves Iran in a worse place and the United States in a better place,” she said.
Asked about the likelihood of a deal, Murkowski said, “you want to be able to give the benefit of the doubt at this moment of time but it causes me to wonder when I look to the broader terms of the deal how exactly we have the leverage to achieve that.”
“We’re in a place where there is a deal that has been signed but it doesn’t appear to me that it puts us in that much different of a position than prior to the beginning of the war,” she said. “A lot of money has been spent, lives have been lost and yet you have Iran in a place where it almost looks like this is where they were before.”
Critics of the deal say that Iran has for years formally declared that it does not have an interest in obtaining a nuclear weapon – a claim that U.S. national security experts have long dismissed as misleading – and that it has a spotty record of adhering to past agreements.
Murkowski said the deal includes “a lot of promises that they appear to make but Iran has not been particularly good in keeping their word.
Updated at 6:51 a.m. EDT
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