The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had joined an AIPAC-backed effort to pressure President Joe Biden on diplomacy with Iran, sparking a backlash from pro-diplomacy advocates.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Robert Menendez (D–N.J.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) circulated a letter Monday urging President Biden to use “the full force of our diplomatic and economic tools…to come to an agreement that meaningfully constrains [Iran’s] destabilizing activity throughout the Middle East and its ballistic missile program.”
Menendez and Graham have both opposed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that Biden has pledged to rejoin. Biden may already be taking a somewhat harder line on Iran in fear of Menendez’s wrath, Politico reported earlier this month.
The two senators are asking for more offices to sign onto their letter. It comes as 70 Democrats in the House of Representatives joined a Republican-led letter warning that the JCPOA has failed to stop “the full range of Iran’s threats" and calling for Biden to seek an “agreement or set of agreements” that secures more Iranian concessions.
“We have knowledge that AIPAC was behind this letter,” said Dylan Willliams, advocacy director at the left-leaning pro-Israel group J Street, referring to the House letter. “All of these vehicles on Iran and the Senate letter on the ICC are AIPAC asks that would normally be made around their annual policy conference, which is not being held this year. However, they are still making a number of legislative asks as they usually would at this time.”
Williams noted that AIPAC got several Democrats to sign onto a letter calling on the Trump administration to get the United Nations arms embargo on Iran extended. The Trump administration then cited the letter as support for sanctions “snapback,” a controversial diplomatic move opposed by the letter’s top Democratic signer.
“This is a move that AIPAC attempts all the time,” Williams told Responsible Statecraft. “They sell the letter to lawmakers as meaning one thing, and then promote it as backing a materially-different policy.”
AIPAC has not responded to a request for comment from Responsible Statecraft as of press time, but has issued a statement publicly praising the letter.
Supporters of diplomacy with Iran are now pushing back.
In an email to congressional offices, J Street warned that Menendez and Graham’s letter “will be used by the [JCPOA]'s opponents to claim that letter signers oppose lifting sanctions that must be lifted in order to bring the US back into compliance…unless and until the agreement is massively broadened.”
J Street’s email, which was obtained by Responsible Statecraft, urged supporters of diplomacy not to sign the letter unless it includes a line acknowledging that some signatories support the JCPOA. It also calls on them to cosponsor the Iran Diplomacy Act, a bill in support of the 2015 deal.
NIAC Action, the National Iranian American Council’s lobbying arm, warned in its own statement that Menendez and Graham’s letter “would make the attainable impossible and risks setting President Biden on course for war with Iran” because it “suggests that the only acceptable agreement is one that addresses all concerns with Iran at once.”
“There is one clear option for the administration to roll back Iran’s nuclear program and create a pathway to begin negotiations on other areas of concern: returning to full compliance with the JCPOA,” the statement by NIAC Action argues. “Any efforts to muddle or frustrate this pathway are not helpful and risk frustrating serious diplomatic efforts that are underway.”
The Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker lobby group, also pushed back on the letter.
“This letter from Senators Menendez and Graham supports a continuation of the same failed maximum pressure strategy from the Trump administration, that has created instability in the Middle East, put us on a war footing with Iran, and caused untold human suffering for Iranian people, who now lack access to many critical life-saving medicines,” says Hassan El Tayyab, the committee’s legislative manager for Middle East policy.
Under the JCPOA, the Iranian government had agreed to enforce strict limits on its nuclear program and subject it to rigorous international inspections in exchange for six world powers lifting long-standing economic sanctions against Iran.
Former President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 and imposed “super maximum economic pressure” while demanding a “better deal.” Iran has since escalated its nuclear activities, although it has promised to roll them back to the limits prescribed by the JCPOA if the sanctions are lifted.
Biden has publicly stated that he wants to get both sides back into compliance with the JCPOA as a springboard for further diplomacy. But hawks are urging the Biden administration to ditch the JCPOA and use sanctions as leverage to gain more concessions, including on Iran’s regional policy and ballistic missile program.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans support “direct negotiations” to deal with the Iranian nuclear program, a poll published by YouGov and the Economist earlier this week shows.
“While we may have differing views on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action of 2015 and the overall approach of the Trump Administration’s maximum pressure campaign, we must confront the reality that Iran has accelerated its nuclear activity in alarming ways,” the letter by Menendez and Graham states. “We further agree that outside of its nuclear program, Iran continues to pose a threat to U.S. and international security.”
Menendez and Graham have both previously opposed the JCPOA and called for a harder line on Iran. In 2013, both proposed a joint resolution backing Israeli military action against the Iranian nuclear program. Later that year, Menendez attempted to pass new sanctions on Iran while negotiations for the JCPOA were still underway, a move that several senior Democrats opposed.
The two senators slightly diverged over Trump’s maximum pressure campaign. Menendez publicly opposed Trump’s decision to leave the JCPOA, while Graham became an enthusiastic supporter of the pressure campaign, even calling for military strikes against Iranian oil facilities.
But Menendez also joined Republicans in calling on Trump to maintain economic pressure on Iran during the coronavirus crisis, a position that put Menendez at odds with senior members of his own party, who supported humanitarian exemptions to the sanctions to help Tehran contain the pandemic.
And he continued to oppose the JCPOA at a confirmation hearing last week, calling the accord insufficient to deal with the full range of Iranian threats.
Other Democrats disagreed with Menendez’s position.
“Many of us supported the [JCPOA] on its terms,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D–Conn.) at the same hearing. “By expanding out the number of things we want to talk about at this negotiating table, I worry that we may be setting ourselves up for failure.”
![Following a largely preordained election, Vladimir Putin was sworn in last week for another six-year term as president of Russia. Putin’s victory has, of course, been met with accusations of fraud and political interference, factors that help explain his 87.3% vote share. If this continuation of Putin’s 24-year-long hold on power makes one thing clear, it’s that he and his regime will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. But, as his war in Ukraine continues with no clear end in sight, what is less clear is how Washington plans to deal with this reality. Experts say Washington needs to start projecting a long-term strategy toward Russia and its war in Ukraine, wielding its political leverage to apply pressure on Putin and push for more diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict. Only by looking beyond short-term solutions can Washington realistically move the needle in Ukraine. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the U.S. has focused on getting aid to Ukraine to help it win back all of its pre-2014 territory, a goal complicated by Kyiv’s systemic shortages of munitions and manpower. But that response neglects a more strategic approach to the war, according to Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who spoke in a recent panel hosted by Carnegie. “There is a vortex of emergency planning that people have been, unfortunately, sucked into for the better part of two years since the intelligence first arrived in the fall of 2021,” Weiss said. “And so the urgent crowds out the strategic.” Historian Stephen Kotkin, for his part, says preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty is critical. However, the apparent focus on regaining territory, pushed by the U.S., is misguided. “Wars are never about regaining territory. It's about the capacity to fight and the will to fight. And if Russia has the capacity to fight and Ukraine takes back territory, Russia won't stop fighting,” Kotkin said in a podcast on the Wall Street Journal. And it appears Russia does have the capacity. The number of troops and weapons at Russia’s disposal far exceeds Ukraine’s, and Russian leaders spend twice as much on defense as their Ukrainian counterparts. Ukraine will need a continuous supply of aid from the West to continue to match up to Russia. And while aid to Ukraine is important, Kotkin says, so is a clear plan for determining the preferred outcome of the war. The U.S. may be better served by using the significant political leverage it has over Russia to shape a long-term outcome in its favor. George Beebe of the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft, says that Russia’s primary concerns and interests do not end with Ukraine. Moscow is fundamentally concerned about the NATO alliance and the threat it may pose to Russian internal stability. Negotiations and dialogue about the bounds and limits of NATO and Russia’s powers, therefore, are critical to the broader conflict. This is a process that is not possible without the U.S. and Europe. “That means by definition, we have some leverage,” Beebe says. To this point, Kotkin says the strength of the U.S. and its allies lies in their political influence — where they are much more powerful than Russia — rather than on the battlefield. Leveraging this influence will be a necessary tool in reaching an agreement that is favorable to the West’s interests, “one that protects the United States, protects its allies in Europe, that preserves an independent Ukraine, but also respects Russia's core security interests there.” In Kotkin’s view, this would mean pushing for an armistice that ends the fighting on the ground and preserves Ukrainian sovereignty, meaning not legally acknowledging Russia’s possession of the territory they have taken during the war. Then, negotiations can proceed. Beebe adds that a treaty on how conventional forces can be used in Europe will be important, one that establishes limits on where and how militaries can be deployed. “[Russia] need[s] some understanding with the West about what we're all going to agree to rule out in terms of interference in the other's domestic affairs,” Beebe said. Critical to these objectives is dialogue with Putin, which Beebe says Washington has not done enough to facilitate. U.S. officials have stated publicly that they do not plan to meet with Putin. The U.S. rejected Putin’s most statements of his willingness to negotiate, which he expressed in an interview with Tucker Carlson in February, citing skepticism that Putin has any genuine intentions of ending the war. “Despite Mr. Putin’s words, we have seen no actions to indicate he is interested in ending this war. If he was, he would pull back his forces and stop his ceaseless attacks on Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council said in response. But neither side has been open to serious communication. Biden and Putin haven’t met to engage in meaningful talks about the war since it began, their last meeting taking place before the war began in the summer of 2021 in Geneva. Weiss says the U.S. should make it clear that those lines of communication are open. “Any strategy that involves diplomatic outreach also has to be sort of undergirded by serious resolve and a sense that we're not we're not going anywhere,” Weiss said. An end to the war will be critical to long-term global stability. Russia will remain a significant player on the world stage, Beebe explains, considering it is the world’s largest nuclear power and a leading energy producer. It is therefore ultimately in the U.S. and Europe’s interests to reach a relationship “that combines competitive and cooperative elements, and where we find a way to manage our differences and make sure that they don't spiral into very dangerous military confrontation,” he says. As two major global superpowers, the U.S. and Russia need to find a way to share the world. Only genuine, long-term planning can ensure that Washington will be able to shape that future in its best interests.](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/media-library/following-a-largely-preordained-election-vladimir-putin-was-sworn-in-last-week-for-another-six-year-term-as-president-of-russia.jpg?id=34283894&width=600&height=600&quality=90&coordinates=483%2C0%2C483%2C0)
