In an exchange at yesterday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew refused to answer Sen. Robert Menendez (D – N.J.) when he asked whether the administration would support an effort by Congress to reauthorize sanctions legislation against Iran, which is set to expire next year. A video of the exchange is embedded below.

Menendez began by asking, “If snap back provisions of the sanctions are to be an effective deterrent, as the administration has suggested, of the Iranians breaking the agreement, will the administration agree to support the reauthorization of the existing sanctions that passed the Senate 99 to 0, and which expire next year?”

Lew responded, that “[i]f they comply we said we would not reimpose nuclear sanctions if they live with the nuclear agreement.”

Menendez then clarified his question, “If you’re going to snap back, you’ve got to snap back to something. … If, in fact, the sanctions that exist, that you all heralded and said brought Iran to the table, expire next year, 2016, and we don’t reauthorize it, there’s nothing at least in that context to snap back to, so why won’t you simply say that the administration supports, under all the same provisions including the president’s waivers, the reauthorization of those sanctions so that the Iranians know that if they violate that the snap back will also include snap back to what the Congress passed.”

Lew called it “premature” to discuss a law that’s still in force.

Noting that Iran would have to observe the terms of the agreement for at least eight years, Menendez summed up his concerns by saying, “I don’t understand how we ultimately have a credible belief that “snap back” means something if, in fact, you’re not going to have the ability to have those sanctions in place.”

[Photo: Senate Foreign Relations Committee ]