Bipartisan group of Senators call for Iran deal beyond nuclear issues

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) – Sen. Bob Menendez (New Jersey), the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), the lead Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee and a major voice in US national security matters, together sponsored a bipartisan senatorial letter to President Joe Biden, calling on him to include in any new agreement with Iran other aspects of its malign policies in addition to its nuclear program.

The March 25 letter, signed by nearly half the US Senate—43 of its 100 members—warns of multiple dangers from Tehran: its support for terrorism and proxy forces; its ballistic and cruise missiles programs; and its abuse of the basic human rights of its own citizens.

Since 2018, when the US left the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and re-imposed sanctions on Tehran, Iran has been decreasing its compliance with the nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA.)

Most recently, on Feb. 23, Iran ended snap inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), charged with monitoring Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA, and started withholding video from the cameras that monitor its declared sites. Tehran said that the US must lift sanctions within three months, and if it did not, Iran would destroy the recordings without ever providing them to the IAEA.

Nuclear Program

“We must confront the reality that Iran has accelerated its nuclear activity in alarming ways, including increasing its centrifuge research and production and enriching uranium up to 20 percent,” the senators stated in their letter to Biden.

Con Coughlin, the Defense Editor of the British paper, The Telegraph, reported earlier this week that “Iran is deliberately concealing key components of its nuclear program from UN inspectors that can be used for producing nuclear weapons, according to the latest reports received by Western intelligence officials.”

Although Coughlin did not specify which reports contain that information or their source, he is a highly-regarded journalist, and his story should be taken seriously.

The nuclear equipment that Iran is hiding “includes machinery, pumps and spare part for centrifuges,” Coughlin explained.

“The new revelations that Iran is trying to conceal vital elements of its nuclear program,” he continued, quoting an unnamed senior Western intelligence source, “show that Iran has no intention of complying” with the JCPOA and is “yet another indication that the regime remains committed to acquiring nuclear weapons.”

It has been over a month since Iran curtailed IAEA inspections, and “there are now serious concerns that Iran has resumed work on developing nuclear weapons,” Coughlin cautioned.

Terrorism, Proxy Forces, and Arms Exports

The US senators also warned about another dimension of the threat from Iran: its support for unorthodox means of warfare. The US tends to rely on technology and best fights conventional wars: one military force against another.

By contrast, the Iranians exploit the fact that they are a Middle Eastern country and well-versed in the culture and politics of the region.

“Iran continues to pose a threat to US and international security through exporting arms, including highly accurate missiles,” while “supporting Shia militias that target US service members, and supporting terrorist organizations and other malign actors throughout the region,” the senators’ letter stated.

Indeed, Iran has gained considerable influence in Iraqi politics through the support of such militias. That began soon after the US-led war that overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime. However, such Iranian influence was held, relatively speaking, in check until the emergence of ISIS in 2014, which, at its height, occupied one-third of Iraq.

Iranian-backed militias helped fight the Sunni terrorist group, and in the process, gained unprecedented influence in Iraq. Moreover, they continue to occupy key parts of the country, including Sinjar (Shingal), where they block the implementation of the security agreement which Erbil and Baghdad reached last fall and which would allow the reconstruction of the area and return to their ancestral homeland of Yezidis who lived there before ISIS’ brutal rampage.

READ MORE: KRG and Baghdad reach administrative, security agreement on Sinjar

On March 11, in his speech marking Nowruz, the New Year, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that US forces must leave Iraq and Syria.

Subsequently, militia groups have made just that demand of the Iraqi government and have stepped up their attacks on it.

On Thursday, one such militia, Rab’allah, a relatively new and shadowy group, which emerged last year in the months following the US assassination of Qasim Soleimani, head of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, marched through the streets of Baghdad, threatening Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi. “It is time to cut off your ears,” one of their posters read.

READ MORE: Rab’allah militia parades through Baghdad, issues list of demands to PM

In addition, the senators expressed their concerns about “Iran’s continued human rights abuses of its own citizens and the increasing size and capabilities of its ballistic and cruise missile programs.”

They also stressed the importance of releasing “all American citizens unjustly detained in Iran,” including four Iranian-Americans.

On Feb. 18, the US responded to an invitation, issued by the European Union (EU), to renew talks on the JCPOA. Iran, however, rejected the proposal and proceeded to restrict IAEA inspections.

In his New Year’s speech, Khamenei reaffirmed Tehran’s rejection of the proposed EU talks, insisting that the US must take the first step.

“The Americans must lift the sanctions, all the sanctions, and then we will verify, and if they are truly lifted, then we will return to our JCPOA commitments,” Khamenei said.

Editing by Khrush Najari