Rubio predicts no immediate vote on Iran sanctions

The new Republican-controlled Congress will likely start 2015 by demanding an up-or-down vote on any nuclear deal with Iran, a leading Senate hawk told US public radio.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told NPR he's "prepared to vote for additional sanctions today." But he predicted that Congress would instead initially demand a say, with more sanctions to come if a deal doesn't meet lawmakers' expectations.

"Probably the first vote in my sense will be something that will require any deal to come before Congress for approval, the way a treaty would," Rubio told the "Morning Edition" program in a year-end interview scheduled to run on New Year's Day. "That's my sense of where we would initially go."

Rubio, a potential candidate for president in 2016, said he would personally prefer to pass new sanctions immediately, despite President Barack Obama's warning that doing so could derail international negotiations. Rubio said he thinks the Iranians are just stalling for time, but he acknowledged that many of his colleagues would prefer taking a wait-and-see approach.