Obama’s U.N. First Gambit He uses the Security Council to Box in Congress on Iran.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-u-n-first-gambit-1437435308
President Obama thinks he has the U.S. Congress right where he wants it as the Members consider his nuclear deal with Iran. Not only do opponents need a two-thirds majority in both houses to stop it, the President has maneuvered to box them in by having the United Nations approve it first.
That’s the meaning of Monday’s unanimous vote by the U.N. Security Council approving the deal less than a week after negotiations were completed. The various ambassadors blessed the agreement with much self-congratulation but no debate on the substance. The only discouraging word came from Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor, who doesn’t sit on the council but pointed out that the deal had achieved the impossible of uniting Israel and the Arab world in opposition.
Democrats and Republicans have criticized this U.N. First gambit, and Secretary of State John Kerry claimed Sunday that it wasn’t deliberate. He said he and the President had really, truly wanted the U.N. to hold off until Congress completed its 60-day review as specified in U.S. law, but the other global parties simply couldn’t wait.
“It’s presumptuous of some people to suspect that France, Russia, China, Germany, Britain ought to do what the Congress tells them to do,” Mr. Kerry lectured his former Capitol Hill colleagues on ABC’s “This Week.” Mr. Kerry added as a sort of consolation that his hard bargaining did get the U.N. to delay the provisions of Monday’s resolution from going into effect for 90 days.
Thanks for nothing, which is the real point. Mr. Obama deliberately structured his Iran negotiations to make Congress a secondary party to the U.N. The Security Council vote means that the process of lifting international economic sanctions is now under way and the pact will roll forward. Mr. Kerry and supporters of the deal will also now argue that if Congress does reject the pact, the international coalition and sanctions regime can’t be reassembled.
This has been Mr. Obama’s strategy all along—to present Congress with a political fait accompli. First he constructed the negotiation as an executive agreement, rather than as a treaty that would have required a two-thirds vote of approval in the Senate. Congress can still vote to disapprove the pact, but Mr. Obama has promised to veto that resolution and all he needs is one-third of either house to sustain the veto. And now the U.N. vote lets him assert that disapproval in Congress will pit America against the rest of the world outside the Middle East.
Congress shouldn’t fall for it. Other than Israel and the Sunni Arab states, the U.S. has the most to lose from a bad nuclear deal. Iran doesn’t call China “The Great Satan,” and its proxies haven’t murdered Russian soldiers. The ballistic missiles that Iran will be able to build with impunity after eight years won’t be aimed at Paris. They’ll be aimed at U.S. allies, troops and the American homeland.
The bigger issue here is self-government. The U.S. Constitution gives Presidents enormous clout on foreign policy, especially when Congress won’t assert its own powers. But Mr. Obama doesn’t have the authority to let the United Nations dictate to America’s elected Representatives.
Even if Mr. Obama does veto a resolution of disapproval, a bipartisan majority vote against the Iran deal would be a forceful statement to Iran and the world that Mr. Obama is acting without the support of the American people.
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