Expert: Purpose of Iran announcement to show 'progress,' fend off Congressional action

As the American domestic battle over the surrender to Iran kicks off, a former nuclear weapons adviser to President Hussein Obama says that the entire reason for the announcement of a 'framework' agreement with Iran was to show 'progress' and forestall Congressional action.

[T]he tentative agreement might have provided the administration with crucial breathing room by undercutting support among Democrats for legislation that could imperil further negotiations.

“The whole purpose of this exercise was to demonstrate progress in order to fend off congressional action,” said Gary Samore, a former nuclear arms adviser to Obama who is the executive director for research at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

While several Democrats have suggested that Congress should be able to vote any Iran agreement up or down — input Corker described as the “rightful role” of Congress — key lawmakers within the president's party offered their support.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CNN's “State of the Union” that the nuclear framework was “a better agreement, candidly, than I thought it was ever going to be” and that she would not support Corker's bill in its current form.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., noted on NBC that other sanctions — including over Iran's ballistic missile program, the country's support for terrorism and its record on human rights — will remain in place even if the framework agreement is finalized. And he countered the criticism that the deal does nothing to alter the behavior of a country Netanyahu repeatedly called the “pre-eminent terrorist state of our time.”

“It's true that this deal doesn't turn Iran from a bad guy into a good guy,” Murphy said. “But it's a little bit of rewriting of history to suggest these negotiations were about all of the other nefarious activities of Iran in the region. These negotiations were about ending their nuclear program, such that we can start to lift up the moderate elements ... (and) talk about all these other issues.”

What could go wrong?