Obama, Netanyahu battle in Congress over Iran

US President Barack Obama is to host top senators from the two major parties at the White House on Tuesday in a bid to ask them not to pass a bill imposing new sanctions on Iran, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is bent on pressing US lawmakers to buck Obama.

“It’s the president’s view that it’s the right thing to do for Congress to pause,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney on Monday.

Netanyahu however, disagrees. He has been struggling in recent weeks to get US senators to consider new sanctions against Iran at a time when negotiators from Iran and the P5+1 – the five permanent member of the UN Security Council plus Germany – are saying a deal is “quite possible” over Tehran’s nuclear energy program.

“I think you should not only keep up the pressure; I think you should increase the pressure,” Netanyahu said in an interview with CNN on Sunday, referring to a series of sanctions that Israel and the West hope will affect the Iranian nuclear civil program.

Netanyahu’s economy and trade minister, Naftali Bennett, visited Washington last week, actively lobbying US lawmakers to act against Tehran. Israeli ambassador to the US Ron Dermer will also meet with congressional Republicans and Democrats this week over Iran.

The Israeli efforts come as representatives from Iran and the six world powers are set to meet again in Geneva on November 20. The meeting will be the third round of talks that began in October after new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appointed a new negotiating team headed by Foreign Minsiter Mohammad Javad Zarif.

The Senate Banking Committee is currently looking at a new anti-Iran sanctions bill passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in July by a 400-20 vote. The House bill seeks to cut Iran’s oil exports by one million barrels a day for the next year and includes threats of military force against Iran.

The Senate Banking Committee’s chairman, Sen. Tim Johnson (D-South Dakota), has indicated that he will honor Obama’s request by sitting on the bill.

However, some Republicans have vowed to bring the sanctions bill up as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which the Senate voted 91-0 on Monday to advance and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) wants to be passed before the Senate’s Thanksgiving break.