The bipartisan heads of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee met with Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on Tuesday to demand access to two documents about the multinational accord on Iran’s nuclear program.
The meeting came ahead of multiple days of public and private presentations the Obama administration has planned to encourage lawmakers to back its landmark agreement.
{mosads}Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and ranking member Ben Cardin (D-Md.) huddled with Moniz to discuss “two documents that are not delivered to us that we’d like to have,” Corker said.
Those two documents were in addition to the formal Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, annexes and related materials that the State Department sent lawmakers on Sunday, Corker said. The transmission of that plan started the clock on Congress’s 60-day window to review the deal and potentially vote to kill it.
“We wanted them over to talk about those two particular documents that weren’t part of what were transmitted,” Corker told reporters on Tuesday.
One of the documents pertained to Iran’s Parchin military complex, Corker said. The other related to “a side agreement that Iran has with the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency].”
Corker and Cardin has sent a letter requesting them on Tuesday, he added.
Tuesday’s meeting comes ahead of a classified session in which Moniz will join Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Jack Lew to provide a classified briefing on the deal with all members of the House and Senate on Wednesday.
On Thursday, the three secretaries will testify in a public hearing in the Foreign Relations Committee.
“I think it’s going to be a very educational three or four hours in the committee,” Corker said. “I really do.”
Kerry, Moniz and Lew will head over to the House Foreign Affairs Committee next Tuesday.