Democrats in the U.S. Senate were able to effectively kill an opposition resolution to the Iran nuclear deal Thursday using the threat of a filibuster.

It’s a common prodecural measure in the Senate that calls a vote to end debate or “invoke cloture” a movement that requries 60 votes. That movement failed 58 to 42 indicating there wouldn’t be enough support to end debate on the issue and have a real vote.

U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, a Republican from Yuma Colorado, criticized Democrats in the Senate for trying to avoid a public vote Thursday on the Iran nuclear agreement.

Gardner, talking by phone from Washington, D.C., told The Gazette that it was a “shameful” outcome given that 98 Senators voted in support of a law giving Congress the ability to scrutinize the Iran agreement.

That scrutiny has taken the shape of a proposed Opposition Resolution to the Iran deal led by the entire Republican delegation and a handful of Democrats.

“The only bi-partisan element of the Iran nuclear deal is the opposition of the deal,” Gardner said. “The American people deserve a vote.”

A vote on the opposition resolution at this point would be largely symbolic. President Barack Obama has said he would veto a bill opposing the deal that has been brokered between the Middle Eastern country and the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom.

The threat isn’t really a filibuster that’s going to take place, but rather a threat of a filibuster – endless debate – that prevents an official vote from being taken.

The House and Senate would need a supermajority to override the president’s veto and last week Democrats in the Senate were able to secure enough supporters to ensure that won’t happen.

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Denver, said in a statement he supports the Iran deal as being “more likely to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon than the plausible alternatives.”

His spokesman Adam Bozzi, said Thursday that Bennet would have “preferred and up or down vote on the merits” of the Iran deal.

“But as often happens in Washington, politics have prevailed, and this will be the only vote we’ll have on this agreement,” Bozzi said. “So, this vote serves as the vote on the substance.”

Bennet helped draft the economic sanctions that he said “crippled Iran’s economy” and “brought Iran to the negotiating table.”

The deal trades greater control over Iran’s growing nuclear program in exchange for lifting many of those sanctions and opening up Iran to receive economic aid.

Iran’s nuclear program is permitted to continue for energy related purposes but the whole purpose of the deal is to prevent uranium enrichment for the development of nuclear weapons.

“The bottom line is this deal does nothing other than pave a pathway for Iran to achieve a full nuclear threshold and it does so with the blessings of the world and thriving economy,” Gardner said.

Bennet argued in a statement he put out last week that in absence of an agreement the sanctions on Iran would be lifted anyway.

“It is clear that reaching no agreement would result in Iran’s receiving billions of dollars of sanctions relief with no oversight of its nuclear program. That is an unacceptable result,” Bennet said.

Gardner said that argument is a false-choice.

“We should go back to what the president said he was going to do, which is doubling down on our sanctions,” Gardner said. “The congressional sanctions are what brought Iran to the negation table in the first place.”

Meanwhile the House is grappling with internal politics of its own and could be pushing a separate measure in support of the agreement. That measure would likely fail in the House, but would do nothing to stop the agreement except send a public message that there isn’t support for Obama’s deal in the House.