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Press TV has conducted an interview with Franklin Lamb, international lawyer from Beirut about the issue of the attack on the P5+1 deal with a push for new sanctions against Iran from within US Congress.

- What exactly is the game plan of the members of the US Congress vis-à-vis the sanctions talk that they keep bringing up?

- Firstly I think Abbas Araqchi’s comments (Iran's deputy foreign minister) are certainly directed at the P5+1 and the US Congress, but also probably at some of the critics within Iran itself that this isn’t a ‘done deal’ and it’s not a ‘sell out’.

With respect to the Congress, you know, that is not really going anywhere. The Zionists cooked up this whole issue about nuclear weapons.

I think the P5+1 are understanding that the more that they talk with the Islamic Republic negotiators the clearer it becomes that they were playing it straight in denying that they were interested in nuclear weapons.

So that was kind of a fake issue. Sure you’ve got some voices coming out, the same voices of a certain clique controlled, financed by AIPAC and the Zionists who will say anything.

And they will threaten and they will posture to please not the constituents, not those who have elected them and will have a chance to vote in the coming election, but their paymasters – they want to please AIPAC and the Zionist regime still occupying Palestine.

Obama has made it very clear he is going to veto it. There is no interest or appetite with the American people the American public for reviving these sanctions. The more we have contact with the Iranians the more we are learning that they are awfully a lot like us and that our national security interest is in making this agreement work.

It will have effects on Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, certainly Syria and Lebanon. It’s critical as Kerry said. Much, much more important in a sense than this Geneva II and all this stuff going on in Syria because this is vital – it’s vital for Iran, America and the whole region.

So I can understand Abbas Araqchi’s concern, but personally it doesn’t look like there is any realistic chance that the Congress is going to get anywhere with any sort of threats about sanctions.

- Maybe you can correct me on this, but I was reading that there is a certain number of members of Congress where if the support for sanctions reaches that number then Obama cannot veto their measure. Firstly if you could clarify that for us...

And secondly, if that does happen does that not put the Obama administration and the entire US government in a very awkward position when it comes to this Geneva deal?

- It does put them in an awkward position and the public too because it sends a signal to the Islamic Republic that they’re not serious.

They had 24 votes; those co-sponsors for measures of that bill. Now they are up to 48. They need 60 votes to make it veto-proof in the Congress. But that doesn’t stop the president as commander-in-chief from vetoing the whole legislation.
It’s true that they continue to milk this thing for attention and publicity and to ingratiate themselves to the Zionists, but I personally don’t see it as realistic. The American government, the American people don’t want to mess up this deal, it’s too important to see it go forward.

Now we’re on a ‘time out’ – a sort of pause position with the agreement that was made Sunday; and we’ve got another 30 days and then six months. Nobody except the Zionists want this to fail and I don’t think they’ve got the power – even in the Congress, to stop it.