While President Barack Obama delivered his much anticipated speech on the Iran nuclear deal — hoping to appeal to congressional Democrats who could sink or save the agreement — the only administration official to have purportedly seen "side deals between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency" has disclosed that the team was privy to only rough drafts,
The Hill reports.
"I didn't see the final documents. I saw the provisional documents, as did my experts," said Wendy Sherman, the Obama administration's undersecretary of state for political affairs, who was one of the deal's lead negotiators.
Sherman appeared before a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Wednesday.
Sherman, according to The Hill, said she and her team were only permitted access to the side deals, which include Iran's earlier efforts on a bomb and access to its Parchin military site, "in the middle of the negotiation when the IAEA wanted to go over with some of our experts the technical details."
The side deals, she said, remain confidential and can't be submitted to Congress.
According to
USA Today, citing the White House, Obama is arguing in the speech that the nuclear deal represents "the most consequential foreign policy debate since the decision to go to war in Iraq."
The same politicians who supported the Iraq War are opposed to diplomacy with Iran, he points out, and "that it would be an historic mistake to squander this opportunity."
Sherman defended to the Senate Banking Committee the administration's decision to allow the confidentiality agreements "despite the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act demanding all related agreements, because the administration wanted the IAEA to respect the confidentiality of their agreements with the U.S.," The Hill reports.
"We want to protect U.S. confidentiality ... this is a safeguards protocol," said Sherman. "The IAEA protects our confidential understandings ... between the United States and the IAEA."
Later in the hearing she tweaked her position, saying she was shown "documents that I believed to be the final documents, but whether there were any further discussions …"
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