Some members of the U.S. Congress may be resisting proposed new sanctions on Iran, but their opposition doesn’t seem likely to stop Congress passing legislation on Tehran’s nuclear program by the end of March. As one of the negotiators who sat across the table from the Iranians for the past 15 months, though, I can assure you that legislation at this juncture risks undermining a deal that is clearly in the interest of all parties.
Fortunately, there now seems to be broad consensus that introducing more sanctions with immediate effect would simply play into the hands of Iranian hard-liners. With that in mind, ideas for moving legislation have turned to focus on two concepts: establishing a “trigger” for new sanctions, linked either to an arbitrary future date or a collapse in the talks, and defining what would constitute a good deal and requiring an “up or down” vote on it.
But as attractive as these concepts might appear, movement of such legislation still risks sparking an escalatory cycle that the talks neither need nor can handle. Indeed, Iran’s parliament has already demonstrated the risk of raising the stakes now. In a step that directly mirrors the Senate Banking Committee’s decision on January 29 to bring to the Senate floor a “trigger” sanctions bill, Iranian lawmakers moved forward a bill of their own that would require the termination of all compliance with the Joint Plan of Action, or JPOA, if new U.S. sanctions were approved or imposed.
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