Senator Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Republican Senator Lindsay Graham are circulating a new sign-on letter that would undermine diplomacy with Iran, by setting up impossible standards for the deal.
But the fact that they won’t condemn the deal altogether shows how powerful our movement is. They know that support for a U.S. return to the Iran deal is growing and the political costs to opposing diplomacy are high.
The Iran deal was meant to curb Iran’s nuclear program and it worked. But when Trump walked away from the deal, war became a constant threat and the U.S. hit Iran with harmful sanctions that left people scrambling for basic things like medicine, during a pandemic!
Now, President Biden has two options: Diplomacy or War.
With devastating U.S. sanctions currently in effect, people in Iran are effectively under a violent siege. And recent airstrikes in Syria and Iraq are proof that too many parties are all too ready to continue the status quo approach of war and militarism.
Senators Menendez and Graham would see this continue — the same failed maximum pressure strategy from the Trump administration, the same instability, the same war footing with Iran, the same untold human suffering — ALL of it.
The people who are trying to undermine the deal remember the strength of the movement that helped win the deal last time around. That’s why they’re covertly trying to demand unrealistic standards for the deal that ultimately make it impossible.
But the Iran deal is the first step back down the diplomatic path, and if we don’t quickly rejoin it, the status quo cycle of war is all the more likely to continue. We’ve got to push back and stop Senator Menendez and Graham’s letter in its tracks.
