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Negotiators are rushing to a meet an end-of-March deadline to reach a nuclear deal with Iran. The Obama administration and its European partners are willing to lift economic sanctions as long as Iran agrees to freeze its nuclear program. Only a few technical details remain to be worked out, though negotiators remain cautious about the chances of success.

If the deal survives the scrutiny of all the governments concerned, it will have an impact beyond the specific issue of nuclear proliferation. Washington and Tehran could use the agreement as a foundation for the reestablishment of bilateral ties. Rumors abounded in 2014 of secret meetings to discuss the possible opening of a U.S. trade office in Iran following a nuclear agreement.

A deal could also pave the way for greater regional cooperation (which is already under way informally in the fight against the Islamic State on the ground in Iraq). And a landmark accord would also signal Iran’s reentrance into the international community after several decades as a pariah state.

The main obstacle to this virtuous circle of diplomacy is the U.S. Congress. With the Republican Party now in charge of both chambers, congressional hardliners have done their best to undermine the Obama administration’s efforts. House Speaker John Boehner invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress – without first consulting the White House or the opposition party – on the subject of why a deal with Iran was a bad idea.

More recently, 47 Republicans sent a letter to Iranian leaders to remind them that Congress can shoot down an agreement at any time.

Sound familiar? The United States and North Korea were in a similar situation in 1994 after the Clinton administration negotiated the Agreed Framework. That deal averted a major crisis precipitated by North Korea’s announced departure from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Agreed Framework, negotiated over the summer 1994, froze North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for two light-water reactors, shipments of heavy fuel oil, and a pledge to pursue full political and economic normalization.

It was a major deal. Not only did the Agreed Framework prevent an imminent war, it promised to open up a new era in U.S.-North Korean relations. Optimists hoped that the agreement would pave the way to solving some of the most persistent problems in the region, including the most challenging issue of all, the division of the Korean peninsula.

Even though the Clinton administration had to be dragged involuntarily to the negotiating table – after Jimmy Carter’s trip to Pyongyang at the height of the crisis produced the kernel of a compromise – Bill Clinton was sufficiently invested in the agreement to push Congress to approve the funds necessary to build the light-water reactors and send the heavy fuel oil. Congressional hardliners, however, were skeptical about the whole process of engaging with North Korea.

And then came the 1994 mid-term elections. Bill Clinton had entered the White House with a Democratic Party majority in both the House and Senate. Two years later, in 1994, the Democrats lost control of both chambers. It was a devastating political reversal.

The 1994 elections effectively orphaned the Agreed Framework. For the next eight years, Congress put up considerable resistance to the deal, not only rhetorically but where it counted most: appropriations. First, it made the administration scramble to get the funds necessary to send the promised heavy fuel oil shipments to North Korea, which often produced delays that angered Pyongyang. Second, Congress cut the money available for the construction of the two light-water reactors, ensuring that the project would never get much beyond a big hole in the ground.

In a growing atmosphere of mistrust – not only between the United States and North Korea but also between the Clinton administration and Congress – the larger goals of political and economic normalization were forgotten. For its part, North Korea began a secret program to acquire a nuclear weapon through a second path, uranium enrichment.

The Clinton administration had sold the Agreed Framework to Congress by quietly assuring key members that North Korea would collapse before any light-water reactors could be built. North Korea didn’t collapse, but the Agreed Framework did.

Will this history of bungled rapprochement repeat with Iran?

Congress is again playing hardball and doing whatever it can to undercut any forthcoming agreement with Iran. As in 1994, congressional hawks both doubt the intentions of the adversary and simply want the administration to fail. The shift in political control in Congress in 2014 may orphan any Iranian agreement just as the 1994 elections effectively doomed the Agreed Framework.

Fortunately, there are several important differences between the two agreements. The Agreed Framework hinged on the construction of light-water reactors, a project that required considerable sums to accomplish and that Congress could control with relative ease. The current agreement with Iran involves the lifting of economic sanctions, which also requires congressional approval. But Congress is only one player in the sanctions game. European countries can also lift their own sanctions as can the United Nations. Congress may well be outmaneuvered.

Iran is a far more politically heterogeneous place than North Korea. There was never much expectation that the Agreed Framework would embolden political reformers inside North Korea because no one had ever been able to identify such a faction inside the regime. Iran, on the other hand, has much clearer political divisions, and a nuclear agreement could very well play an important role in the liberalization of the country, thus ensuring the kind of political and economic normalization with the United States that was so lacking the North Korean example.

Finally, North Korea and the United States had very few overlapping interests in 1994 apart from a more-or-less shared preference for diplomacy over war. Iran and the United States, on the other hand, are both focused on the threat of Sunni extremism – in the form of the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and other formations. Both countries also want to see a stable Afghanistan. And then there are the commercial interests that drive U.S. and Iranian business interests. Iran is a far more attractive trading partner and location for U.S. investment than North Korea ever was.

These practical considerations – around sanctions, reform inside Iran, and intersecting geopolitical and economic interests – suggest that the current nuclear negotiations have a much better chance of success than the Agreed Framework did in 1994. But this assumes, at from the standpoint of Congress, that the hardliners are susceptible to arguments based on pragmatism. Their recent actions, from the Netanyahu visit to the letter of the 47 senators, suggest otherwise. The challenge for the Obama administration is to create such momentum for rapprochement with Iran that even a Congress inclined to say no will eventually have no choice but to say yes.

By John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy In Focus

The views presented in this column are the writer’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Hankyoreh.

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