NEW YORK — Iran’s parliament will have the final say on July’s nuclear agreement with world powers, with lawmakers expected to vote in about a month, the speaker of parliament told reporters during a visit to New York on Thursday.

“I think the drama will be bigger in my country than in yours,” Ali Larijani said, referring to the debate among both U.S. and Iranian lawmakers. He spoke through a translator.

Lawmakers’ approval of the deal, which would remove economic sanctions on Iran in return for restrictions on its nuclear program, isn’t assured in either country, though President Obama is expected to win Senate backing after securing the necessary votes on Wednesday. In Iran, some parliamentarians have also demanded a vote, a position apparently supported by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei earlier Thursday.

“It’s the representatives of the people who should decide,” Khamenei told Iran’s Assembly of Experts in Tehran, according to comments posted on his website. “I have no advice for parliament as to how they should assess it or whether they should approve or reject it.”

Khamenei has told President Hassan Rouhani that excluding parliament from the legal approval process “was not expedient,” according to his website. So far, Iranian government officials have said they plan to leave the decision to the Supreme National Security Council, which would then require Khamenei’s final approval.

Iran’s lawmakers will vote on the deal after its special committee completes its review in a few weeks, Larijani said. The likely outcome is unclear, he said, though he personally supports the agreement because it lifts sanctions while still allowing Iran to conduct limited uranium enrichment.

The provision for sanctions to be reimposed in the future is one of the “major and serious faults” that some Iranians have found with the agreement, Larijani said.

“That’s why I said the U.S. continued to play the role of bully even when we were negotiating,” he said. “But as I said, overall it was a good deal because Iran also achieved some of its goals.”

Khamenei said earlier there would be “no deal” if the agreement does not result in the complete lifting of sanctions. If sanctions are only temporarily lifted, Iran will in turn only suspend its nuclear activities rather than carry out the “fundamental measures” outlined in the deal, Khamenei said.


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