Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) will force Democrats to vote on legislation demanding that Iran recognize the legitimacy of Israel and release four American captives before receiving sanctions relief under the terms of the deal negotiated by President Obama.
McConnell will offer the bill on Thursday as an amendment to a resolution disapproving of the Iran deal, which Democrats filibustered last week. He announced the new vote on Tuesday, in advance of a second attempt to force a final vote on the resolution of disapproval, the theory being that Democrats might drop the filibuster tonight in order to avoid voting on the amendment.
“Now the president has so far resisted linking his deal — a deal that failed to end Iran’s enrichment program while leaving it as an American-recognized nuclear threshold state — to other aspects of Iran’s conduct,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “But linkage is appropriate and in this negotiation it would have been wise to have linkage.”
Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) originally offered the legislation pertaining to Israel months ago, as an amendment to the bipartisan bill that established a process to review the Iran deal. It was dismissed in May as a “poison pill” proposal. “The Democrats do not want to vote on it,” McConnell said at the time. “If I could vote on it, I would.”
Senate procedure favors the amendment this week, as Democrats cannot filibuster the proposal before having to take a vote to end debate on the resolution of disapproval. Senate Republicans will not try to replicate the three-bill strategy that House Republicans settled on last week, in part because Senate Democrats could filibuster those bills if McConnell tried to bring them up.
— Joel Gehrke is a political reporter for National Review.