Democrats, AIPAC Jeopardize Iran Talks

FOREIGN POLICY

YOCHI DREAZEN & JOHN HUDSON

The Obama administration is facing an unexpected hurdle in its new nuclear talks with Iran - a sizeable bloc of Democratic lawmakers who have made clear that they would break with the White House and fight any effort to lift the current sanctions on Tehran.

The future of those sanctions is a key issue in this week's negotiations in Geneva between senior officials from Iran and the U.S., the most serious talks between the two longtime adversaries in decades. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamad Javad Zarif kicked off Monday's session with a PowerPoint presentation, delivered in English, which offered to put new limits on his country's nuclear program in exchange for easing the Western sanctions that have devastated the Iranian economy and decimated the value of its currency. 

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