Senate proponents of the Review Act count 11 Democratic supporters, including institutionalists such as Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia. Assuming all Republican senators come along, only two more Democrats are necessary for a veto-proof majority. The effort to secure those votes was set back by Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) ill-advised, partisan “Dear Mullah” letter. In the estimate of one supporter of the Review Act, six or seven Democratic senators went from gettable to ungettable. The committee vote was delayed until mid-April, in part to allow partisan tempers to cool.
Many Republican senators are open to supporting a reasonable nuclear deal with Iran. But they have a series of reasonable concerns. Several weeks ago, the multilateral negotiating process — including the five members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany — was effectively superseded when the Obama administration began direct talks with the Iranians. Since then, one senator told me on background, the United States has moved “every day closer to the Iranian position.” This is the source of increasingly vocal concern from excluded partners — including the French, who called for a stiffened spine in negotiations.
As with any nuclear agreement, the devil — or, in this case, the Great Satan — is in the details. What kinds of centrifuges should be allowed? What sort of inspections would limit the prospect of Iranian covert actions? What do we need to know about the previous military dimensions of the Iranian nuclear program? (Recent talks have raised the prospect that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif may not fully know what the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has been doing.)
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