WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the as-yet-undetermined deal currently being negotiated between the United States, its partner nations and Iran over the latter’s nuclear program a "bad deal” on CNN’s "State of the Union" on Sunday.
“[T]he main point is the president is about to make what we believe is a very bad deal,” McConnell said. The majority leader’s comments come after 47 Republican senators signed a letter to Iranian ayatollahs stating that any deal struck with the Obama administration would be temporary.
In defense of the letter, which received bipartisan criticism over the past week, McConnell said, “Members of Congress expressing themselves about important matters not only at home but around the world is not unprecedented.”
He listed Sen. Robert Byrd’s 1979 trip to Russia during negotiations over the Salt II treaty, and Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit with Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega while a senator in the 1980s as the Reagan administration sought to fund right-wing contra rebels.
McConnell further stated that the Senate would vote on legislation that the administration states would undermine talks with Iran.
“We will be acting,” he said. “We will either be voting on a bill that would require the deal to come to Congress. The president said he would veto that. Or if there is no deal, we'll be voting on a bill that says the sanctions need to be ratcheted up.”
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