The leaders of Britain, France, and Germany have defended the Iran nuclear deal agreed in July between Iran and major powers in a U.S. editorial as the debate in the U.S. Congress heats up.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote in The Washington Post on September 10 that voting by Congress this week "is a crucial opportunity at a time of heightened global uncertainty to show what diplomacy can achieve."
In the agreement between six world powers and Iran agreed to in Vienna on July 14, economic sanctions against Tehran will be lifted in exchange for curbs on Iran's nuclear program, which Western powers fear was being used to produce atomic weapons.
Iran says its program is strictly for peaceful purposes.
Cameron, Merkel, and Hollande said in the article that two years of "tough, detailed negotiation have produced an agreement that closes off all possible routes to an Iranian nuclear weapon."
But mainly Republican critics of the deal say U.S. President Barack Obama's administration gave Iran too much in negotiating the deal.
Obama has enough support in Congress to sustain a veto of legislation by Republican-led lawmakers that would reject the nuclear deal.
