Bob Corker

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker said lawmakers left an August 5 briefing by the head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency "less assured" about the nuclear deal with Iran.

U.S. lawmakers skeptical about the nuclear deal with Iran promised to press senior Obama administration officials to make more information about it public at a Senate hearing on July 23 as Congress begins its two-month review of the agreement.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled a vote for first thing July 20 morning on a resolution endorsing the Iran nuclear deal.

The US Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation May 7 giving Congress the right to review and perhaps even reject any nuclear deal with Iran, the culmination of weeks of wrangling over how to hold Tehran to account.

The U.S. Senate on April 28 rejected an effort to require an international nuclear agreement with Iran to be considered a treaty, which would have forced any deal to be approved by two-thirds of the Senate's 100 members before it could take effect. 

Iran is playing a helpful role against Islamic State og Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq now, but once the extremists are vanquished, Tehran-backed militias could undermine efforts to unify the country, the top U.S. military officer said on March 11.