A majority in the U.S. Senate, 51 senators across party lines, now co-sponsor the Nuclear Weapons Free Iran Act of 2013, according to multiple Senate aides. North Dakota Republican Senator, John Hoeven, announced his support Tuesday afternoon, according to Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo, thus adding his vote to the number required for a bill to pass.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) introduced the bill just before Christmas with 25 co-sponsors.

But Jewish lawmaker, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) has become a major obstacle to the new bipartisan Iran sanctions measure, The Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday.

Breaking ranks with leading pro-Israel Democrats like New York Senator Chuck Schumer and New Jersey Senators Robert Menendez and Cory Booker, Ms. Wassermann-Schultz privately urged her fellow Democrats to follow the White House’s lead by opposing the bipartisan House resolution backing new sanctions on Iran, according to multiple congressional sources close to the debate.

Wasserman Schultz’s backroom bid to kill the sanctions measure has angered some Democrats on Capitol Hill and in her hometown of South Florida.

“Debbie has been busy at home telling her constituents she is doing all she can to stop Iran, but in reality it appears she is busy behind the scenes working to scuttle bipartisan action to put increased sanctions pressure on Iran,” one Democrat on Capitol Hill who is closely tracking the Iran debate told The Free Beacon. “Every minute she is publicly silent, or working against bipartisan efforts to pressure Iran, is a minute she is siding with the Mullahs over the American people who overwhelmingly want mounting pressure,” said the source, who asked for anonymity.

(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)