Shortly after 26 senators signed on to a new bipartisan Iran sanctions bill, the White House declared it veto bait.

“The president would veto it,” Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters at the White House. Another round of sanctions now, Carney said — and the White House has repeatedly warned — would threaten the talks. The not-so-subtle hint from the White House is that if Congress pushes the bill anyway it would bring the nations closer to war when the American people would prefer a diplomatic fix.

But that clearly isn’t the view of many senators in both parties, given the introduction of the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, led by Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Sen. Mark S. Kirk, R-Ill.