Senate Democrats seek to soften Iran bill

Senior Democrats in the Senate are trying to water down a high-profile Iran bill that the White House fears could scupper the final stages of nuclear negotiations with Tehran.

Democratic senators started putting forward amendments on Wednesday to the Iran bill, which has become a high-stakes political confrontation between Congress and the White House over the Obama administration's main foreign policy priority.

The new push by Democratic senators to soften the bill reflects the growing belief that there is a vetoproof majority in the Senate for legislation that would give Congress the power to approve or reject any final agreement that might be reached with Iran.

The White House is still officially committed to vetoing any Iran legislation while the talks are ongoing. However, the back-room negotiations could result in a compromise that would be satisfactory for the president, who has acknowledged that Congress is likely to take some sort of vote on a final nuclear deal.

Amid the intense political scrutiny in Washington surrounding the Iran talks, the administration has one final fallback position: while there might be enough Democrats who insist that Congress should vote on a final Iran deal, it believes there will not be enough of them to actually block an agreement.

The administration had hoped the announcement last week of a "framework" for a final agreement with Iran would win it some political space to carry on with the final stages of negotiations, which are due to be completed by the end of June.

However Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee and the architect of the Iran legislation, says the panel will begin voting on the bill when Congress returns from recess next week.

Chris Coons, a Democratic senator on the committee, introduced an amendment on Wednesday that would remove one of the bill's most controversial parts - a stipulation that a final agreement will only be valid if the administration certifies that Iran is not involved in sponsoring terrorism.

The White House said on Tuesday that this section of the bill would undermine the nuclear talks because it would introduce a whole new series of considerations to the negotiations at the last minute.

"We have been very clear that this agreement is focused on preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and that it is not going to succeed in resolving the long list of concerns that we have with Iran's behaviour," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the committee, is also working on changing some of the language in the bill. One of the sections under consideration, according to Senate aides, is the provision that would freeze any final deal with Iran, including measures by the administration to reduce sanctions, while Congress debates the terms.

The White House said that Mr Obama had spoken on Wednesday with Mr Corker, although they had not been "negotiating the terms of any sort of legislation". The president has been full of praise in recent days for the Republican senator, describing him at the weekend as a "good and decent man".

Mr Obama said that he was not opposed to Congress taking a non-binding vote, once a final deal was completed.

"My hope is that we can find something that allows Congress to express itself but does not encroach on traditional presidential prerogatives and ensures that if in fact we get a good deal that we can go ahead and implement it," he told the New York Times.

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