The controversy that arose after 47 Republican senators sent a letter to the leadership of Iran on Monday—in which they pointed out that any agreement over Iran’s nuclear program that did not have congressional approval would only last as long as President Barack Obama’s White House tenure—has led to increased media coverage over the issue of Congress’ role in overseeing and approving any deal.
There are multiple bipartisan initiatives in the Senate that would force any nuclear agreement with Iran to be subject to Congressional oversight. Since the Joint Plan of Actions was signed in November 2013, the U.S. Congress has sought to play a role through a variety of measures.
The two most prominent pieces of legislation are the Kirk-Menendez bill, which would apply economic pressure against Iran if no agreement is reached by the June deadline, and the Corker-Menendez bill, which would subject any deal agreed to by the administration to an “up or down” vote in Congress.
Monday’s open letter noted that “anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”
Despite the different methods by which the Senate aims to play a role in the negotiations, Josh Rogin of Bloomberg News wrote on Sunday, “Senators from both parties are united in an insistence that, at some point, the administration will need their buy-in for any nuclear deal with Iran to succeed.”
When it comes to the Iran negotiations, the Obama administration has said that Congress’ only role is to pass or revoke sanctions legislation. Obama himself has acknowledged that Congress has had a role to play in drafting the sanctions legislation that he subsequently signed into law. If a final agreement is reached, the administration will eventually look to Congress for the lifting of sanctions. But the White House does not believe that any agreement with Iran itself would require congressional approval.
Many analysts believe that without any final deal with Iran will not outlast President Barack Obama’s tenure as President without congressional approval. Without congressional involvement, the Obama administration would be forced to strike a deal with Iran through executive action, which could project to the Iranians that the “deal would be with the President alone,” Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith argued last October. “The bottom line, then, is that any deal struck by President Obama with Iran will probably appear to the Iranians to be, at best, short-term and tenuous. And so we can probably expect, at best, only a short-term and tenuous commitment from Iran in return.”
Walter Russell Mead analyzed the implications of the latest Senate letter on Monday in The American Interest:
One can certainly question the timing of the letter, and it probably ought to have been addressed to President Obama rather than to the Supreme Leader of Iran as a matter of form, but what the Senators say in the letter is, as a matter of both politics and law, correct. Unless President Obama takes a treaty to the Senate and gets it ratified, he has no power to bind Congress or future Presidents to an agreement with Iran. …
The Constitutional problem therefore isn’t that Congress is trying to micromanage the President; the problem is that the President is trying an end run around Congress on a matter of the greatest importance. President Obama has the right to conduct whatever policy he wishes towards Iran as long as he stays within the bounds of American law; he cannot, however, bind future Presidents and Congresses unless the legislative branch weighs in. Writing a letter to the Supreme Leader of Iran might not have been the best or the most tactful way to make the point, but Senators have an obligation to their institution and to the Constitution to uphold their right to review long term international commitments made in America’s name.
Obama has said that “he will be able to make a case to the American people and is confident he will be able to implement it.” However, in addition to bypassing Congress, which represents the American people, the president’s approach to the negotiations has also failed to sway the American people themselves.
Polls show that large, bipartisan majorities of Americans see Iran as “a critical threat” and doubt that the deal being negotiated will prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Moreover, polling shows that there is strong bipartisan support for Congressional oversight of any deal.
[Photo: Rob Shenk / Flickr ]