p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Calibri; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} A Republican maneuver affecting the nuclear deal with Iran could complicate efforts to avert a US government shutdown Friday.

The House of Representatives is taking up spending legislation this week that would keep the government open until early next year. The bill incorporates measures agreed to in the House earlier this summer, including a provision that stipulates that no US funds “may be used to purchase heavy water from Iran.”

The measure is but the latest example of US policymakers undermining some of the financial benefits Tehran hoped to derive from the 2015 agreement. The provision also gives Democrats additional incentive to kill the spending bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), in the Senate, where many lawmakers already have objections because it only funds nondefense programs through January.

"I don’t think we should be doing much in the way of legislating in the CR unless it’s something that’s had some serious consideration,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats, told Al-Monitor.