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Obama lambasts US senators over Iran nuclear letter

But with talks on a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program now in the final stages, the adage that “politics stops at the water’s edge” has been tossed overboard.

Republican leaders recently invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress, despite White House anger over the visit.

Netanyahu, just weeks before a re-election bid, warned a brokered deal would not prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

Instead, he said, “it would all but guarantee that Iran gets those weapons, lots of them.”

With a March deadline looming, negotiators are furiously working to agree on a deal that would curb Iran’s nuclear program in return for reducing Western sanctions.

– ‘Sand in the gears’ –

A new round of talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is due to take place in Lausanne, Switzerland on March 15.

The deal is seen as a key foreign policy goal of the Obama administration.

Many Republicans — and several Democrats — fear such an accord would loosen economic sanctions on Tehran while leaving it free to secretly attempt to develop nuclear weapons technology.

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Iran insists it is developing nuclear power for civilian purposes.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers recently introduced legislation requiring Obama to submit any pending deal with Iran for congressional approval.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who signed Friday’s letter, agreed to delay consideration of the bill, amid complaints from Democrats.

The White House accused Republicans of partisanship, throwing “sand in the gears” and holding a false belief that military action could stall Iran’s nuclear program.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid spoke out against the Republican’s “unprecedented” intervention in sensitive international negotiations “with the sole goal of embarrassing the president of the United States.”

But the initiator of the letter, freshman Senator Tom Cotton, said that while the final terms have yet to be hammered out, details that have emerged already make the deal unpalatable.

“We know so far that Susan Rice, the president’s national security advisor, has already conceded that Iran will have a robust uranium enrichment capability,” Cotton told Fox News.

“The president has said this deal will have a sunset, perhaps as little as 10 years. Those two terms alone make this deal unacceptable — dangerous to the United States and dangerous to the world.”

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