The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee will receive a briefing Tuesday at 2:15 p.m. EST on Biden Administration negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.
Brett McGurk, a member of the National Security Council and Deputy Assistant to the President and Middle East and North Africa Coordinator, will be the first witness at the briefing. He'll be followed by Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley of the U.S. State Department.
The hearing will not be webcast.
President Joe Biden is attempting to revive a 2015 agreement between the U.S. and Iran struck by the administration of President Barack Obama. Effective Jan. 2016, Iran received access to approximately $100 billion in frozen assets if it agreed to "dismantle and delay" its nuclear program.
President Donald Trump abandoned the deal in 2018, calling it a "horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made."
“It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will," Trump said.
McGurk, 48, worked for President George H.W. Bush in Iraq from 2004-2009 and then again for Obama beginning in 2010. Obama named him Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran in 2013.
Malley, 58, was lead negotiator of the Iran deal. He served previously in diplomatic roles for Obama and President Bill Clinton.
On Jan. 27, McGurk told the Carnegie Endowment that "we're now on the verge of a nuclear crisis, because Iran's nuclear program has advanced."
"This is an extremely serious situation," McGurk said. "These talks will have a culmination point, and we're actually reaching that culmination point very soon. We're going to know very soon if it is possible for the Iranians to return to compliance on the nuclear deal on terms that we and the international community can accept."
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran desired its Islamic Revolutionary Guard, deemed a foreign terrorist organization by Trump, be removed from that list.
The 2015 Iran agreement was opposed by Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Critics Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., and Israeli author Yossi Klein Halevi co-authored a 2021 article in The Atlantic arguing the Iran deal "didn’t diminish the Iranian nuclear threat; it magnified it."
"(The deal) allowed Iran to retain its massive nuclear infrastructure, unnecessary for a civilian energy program but essential for a military nuclear program. The agreement did not shut down a single nuclear facility or destroy a single centrifuge," they wrote. "The ease and speed with which Iran has resumed producing large amounts of more highly enriched uranium—doing so at a time of its own choosing—illustrates the danger of leaving the regime with these capabilities. In fact, the (Iran deal) blocks nothing."
The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee's chairman is Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). Its ranking Republican member is Sen. James R. Risch (R-ID). Other members are Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen. Christopher Coons (D-DE), Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), Sen. Jeff Merkeley (D-OR), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen Corey Booker (R-NJ), Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), Sen Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).
