WASHINGTON -- Alaska's senators continue to ask whether the Obama administration's proposed nuclear agreement with Iran gives up too much future negotiating power, as Congress moves toward a vote on the deal in September.
Senators have said that despite numerous classified briefings and public hearings in the weeks since the agreement was announced, questions remain about the underlying details of the agreement.
"One of the frustrations that you're seeing here with the Congress is, we are reading it, we're digging into it and yet when we have questions, looking at the language, we seem to get these spin answers," Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, said at an Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday.
Sullivan serves on the committee, which on Wednesday hosted Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Treasury Jack Lew, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Committee chair Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said there are a slew of questions about how the agreement "will affect regional security, proliferation and the balance of power in the Middle East" and "what it means for perceptions of American credibility and resolve among our allies and partners; and what the consequences are for U.S. defense policy, military planning and force posture."
While the Senate must soon vote on the agreement, some details of how the International Atomic Energy Agency will carry out its inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities remain part of a confidential agreement between IAEA and Iran, "which the U.S. government and the Congress have not seen," McCain said.
Everything that everybody wanted isn't in the U.S.-Iran agreement, Kerry said late in the hearing. "But given the imperatives that we have with respect to Iran's 19,000 centrifuges, 12,000 kilograms of weapons fissile material equal to 10 to 12 bombs already" and Iran's "near imminent" completion of a nuclear reactor that would enable them enough weapons-grade plutonium to make two bombs a year, "we felt that we had to keep this targeted," he said.
"It's easier to push back on an Iran that doesn't have a nuclear weapon than one that does," Kerry said.
Iran is "a nuclear threshold state today," Moniz said at the hearing. The country could generate the materials needed for a nuclear bomb within months, "and that's the risk we face. The deal could walk them back and give us permanent insight into any weapons they might choose" to create, he said.
Sullivan took a sharp tone with the Cabinet secretaries, arguing the deal's provisions aren't worth giving up economic sanctions that have been a key negotiating tool in the past. The so-called "snapback" provision -- which would reinstate international sanctions if Iran violates the deal -- is not what it seems, Sullivan said. "The word 'snapback' isn't in the agreement. I think it would be helpful if you didn't use that term. I think in some ways it's deceitful because it's an illusion. … The snapback is actually more focused on the United States than it is on Iran," he said.
Sullivan referenced his own experience with sanctions negotiations, in national security positions during the George W. Bush administration, and argued that reinstating sanctions could take years. And he argued that language in the agreement would let Iran off the hook if sanctions were imposed for another reason -- such as support of terrorism.
"And as you know, Mr. Secretary, those of us who were involved -- I was in the Bush administration -- in getting countries to actually economically isolate Iran, we used a lot of leverage. We did use leverage with countries saying, 'Hey, you either are going to be in their market or ours.' And that was effective," Sullivan said. But it took years, he added.
And Sullivan pointed to a paragraph of the agreement regarding reintroduction of sanctions that he finds problematic: "'Iran will treat such a reintroduction, a reimposition of sanctions as grounds to cease performing its commitments,'" Sullivan read. "Deal's over." If the U.S. sanctions Iran for some kind of terrorist action in the future, "they can legally walk away from this agreement. So let me ask you this: If we ever, ever posed so-called snapback provisions, isn't the deal over? Where am I wrong on that question?"
Lew countered Sullivan's contention, saying Sullivan was talking about two different scenarios: one where Iran violates its agreement and sanctions go back in place, and another where the U.S. sanctions the country for non-nuclear reasons.
"We have the right to put these kinds of measures in place. They are not nuclear sanctions at that point. They are terrorism sanctions," Lew argued. "We have not given away our ability to put these kinds of measures in place for non-nuclear purposes," Lew said.
Throughout the hearing, Lew argued economic sanctions are not only under the purview of the U.S. government alone. There are other countries with a vested interest in having Iran as a trading partner -- particularly for oil, Lew said.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski also has expressed concerns about the nuclear agreement.
"It seems like the more I learn, the more I become skeptical," she said in an interview last week. After a Thursday briefing with Kerry, Moniz and Lew, "I left with more questions in my mind than I had going in," she said.
"And I appreciate that the secretaries have worked very very hard to get a deal, but I continue to have great, great reservations about the application, the implementation of this snapback provision. I continue to have very serious reservations about this verification process," Murkowski said.
It remains unclear whether Congress will approve the deal -- and what happens if it doesn't. Some have suggested the alternative could include an act of war. Many argue that chances at diplomacy will be lost.
"I think we've got an obligation to very, very, very critically evaluate the fact that the (United Nations) has given its stamp of approval does not mean that the United States Congress gives it the rubber stamp," Murkowski said.