Facing skepticism, if not outright opposition, to an emerging nuclear deal with Iran from the Israeli government and many members of the US Congress, the Barack Obama administration will resume talks tomorrow, Nov. 20, in Geneva without the added complication of imminent new US sanctions.

Senators emerging from a meeting with President Obama on Tuesday said no Iran sanctions would be attached this week to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a must-pass annual bill that funds the US military. “The president has asked for some time for this to be negotiated and see if Iran will live up to the obligations,” Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters. (See updated statement from Corker at bottom of story)

Adam Sharon, spokesman for Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the Foreign Relations committee chairman, told Al-Monitor in an email, “This week, fair to say that Iran will not come up as part of the NDAA, but the NDAA won’t be voted on this week. It will bleed over into the second week of December when we return from recess. What happens then, it’s too soon to say.”

While the Republican-led House of Representatives voted in July to impose new sanctions, the White House has so far persuaded the Senate's Democratic leaders to prevent action on a stand-alone bill, leaving sanctions supporters such as Menendez and Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., the only option of trying to tack them onto an obligatory vehicle like the NDAA. This tactic worked in 2011, producing an extremely tough measure that blacklisted Iran’s Central Bank, among other things.