Kerry: No need for Congress vote on Iran

US Secretary of State John Kerry says the White House does not need congressional approval to suspend sanctions against Iran.

The Obama administration is reportedly planning to suspend sanctions against the Islamic Republic without an immediate vote in Congress, but it says lawmakers will have the final word on whether to permanently terminate the sanctions.

“On sanctions, what we’ve merely said to people is that — and we’ve said this in public testimony as well as in private conversations — that in the first instance, we would look to suspend sanctions, which the president can do, simply because that’s the necessary way to proceed with respect to the negotiations themselves,” Kerry said Wednesday at a press conference in Berlin.

The plan, first revealed by The New York Times on Sunday, does not suggest that the US Congress will be sidestepped on any nuclear deal with Iran, Kerry said.

“I have too much respect for the process of the Congress, the rights of the Congress, and the importance of the relationship between the Executive and the Congress, the Legislative Branch, to ever suggest that there would be any credibility to this notion there’s some thought of going around it,” he stated.

The top US diplomat said that administration officials were engaged in “a regular series of briefings” with lawmakers on the issue, emphasizing that “Congress has an extremely important role to play in this.”

Iran and the P5+1 group– Russia, China, France, Britain, the US and Germany – are negotiating to narrow their differences over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program ahead of a November 24 deadline.

Sources close to the Iranian negotiating team say the main stumbling block to resolving Western disputes over Iran’s nuclear issue is the removal of sanctions, not the number of centrifuges or the level of uranium enrichment.

In July, the US representative in nuclear talks, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, testified that the White House would consult with Congress but did not need its approval to suspend sanctions against Iran.

HRJ/HRJ