Richard Baehr The Iran Deal and Congress
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=12203
The president and his surrogates are working hard to sell whatever you want to call what came out of Lausanne, Switzerland last week between the P5+1 and Iran. The major media outlets seem to have settled on calling it a “framework agreement,” which may be somewhat overstating the reality, since the Iranian version of what has so far been agreed to contains only modest overlap with the four pages the Obama administration has released to tout their achievement in the negotiations.
This difference in the presentation of the deal’s points has been described as something that should not be surprising, since each side needs to convince skeptics or hardliners in their own country that they did not surrender but in fact won key concessions from the other side. The biggest difference between what is going on among the Iranians and what is now transpiring in the United States, however, is that our side has relatively little clue as to the degree of coordination that occurred during the negotiating process between the ostensibly hard-line clerics and the presumably more reform-minded negotiators and the government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. In the United States, on the other hand, there is no evidence at all that skeptics of the proposed deal, be they members of Congress or America’s allies, have had any role whatsoever in shaping the American position in the negotiations. And that of course, is precisely the Obama administration’s goal between now and June 30, when the framework is supposed to be reduced from a whiteboard to a written agreement that is signed by both sides. Congress is to have no review role while the deal is being negotiated, and a review role with no ability to reject the deal after the White House agrees to it.
In fact, we may be witnessing nothing more than a charade on both sides. Secretary of State John Kerry and the others negotiating with the Iranians may well have bought into a fake narrative from Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s chief negotiator, that the P5+1 had to make several major concessions needed to get the framework agreement completed, since Zarif had to sell the agreement to the more conservative ruling clerics — and only he knew the parameters they would accept. At this point, the Obama administration’s intelligence capabilities are practically non-existent inside of Iran, and our allies are probably in the same boat.
However, the Iranians had little trouble discerning American resolve (desperation, really) to make a deal, and if necessary, move off of our starting or preferred positions to do that. There simply was no possibility that the U.S. would walk away from the table last week, and the Iranians of course knew that. As White House Deputy National Security Adviser, and creative writing degree holder, Ben Rhodes has stated — this Iran deal is Obamacare for the second term, the most important foreign policy objective of the president. There can be no retreat in going after a final agreement (only the retreat from our starting position necessary to get Iran to agree).
The Iranians also know that if they maintain their resolve, the remaining issues will move their way between now and June 30. But it might actually be more than that, if Zarif comes back and informs the Americans that some of what ostensibly has already been agreed to in broad outline terms won’t sell back home. With pretty much every Obama administration foreign policy initiative collapsing in flames — intense fighting in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan and Ukraine, and radicalism seemingly taking hold among both Sunnis and Shiites in the Middle East and Africa with fierce new urgency, the need for a “victory” of any kind becomes paramount to preserve the chances for Obama to shape his legacy in his remaining 21 months in office. The victory that the Iranians may give Obama, in exchange for achieving their major goal of having pretty much all tough sanctions on their country quickly removed, is to avoid the “breakout to the bomb” while he is still in office.
The Obama administration’s resolve to get a deal done can also be seen in the president’s selling of the framework agreement, with a goal in mind of appearing to consult with Congress, while in reality trying to get to June 30, 2015 and a signed final agreement before Congress gets to act.
Even the Obama administration’s “house organ,” The New York Times felt it necessary to disclose that the American version of the agreement was prepared largely for public relations purposes: “American officials acknowledge that they did not inform the Iranians in advance of all the ‘parameters’ the United States would make public in an effort to lock in progress made so far, as well as to strengthen the White House’s case against any move by members of Congress to impose more sanctions against Iran.
“‘We talked to them and told them that we would have to say some things,’ said a senior administration official who could not be identified under the protocol for briefing reporters. ‘We didn’t show them the paper. We didn’t show them the whole list.'”
The official acknowledged that it was “understood that we had different narratives, but we wouldn’t contradict each other.”
The real fight in Congress, however, to the extent there is one, is unlikely to be over the sanctions issue. That will come up, but in reality only after June 30, and only if an agreement is not reached (which seems pretty unlikely). The real battle will come sooner, and it will concern whether Congress gets to provide input on the deal before it is put to bed (the June 30 final agreement date) or get to vote on it after it is signed. This after-the-fact consideration has two approaches: Consider the agreement as a treaty, meaning the White House would need to win a two-thirds vote in Congress to get it passed (a very tough bar to pass); or, more likely, treat the agreement as a regular order, meaning that if Congress votes it down, and the president vetoes that action, the House of Representatives and Senate would need a two-thirds vote in each body to overturn his veto and kill the deal.
The Obama administration is surely aware that in every public opinion survey a large majority of Americans said they wanted Congress to review the Iran deal. The administration had at one point devised a strategy of going first to the U.N. Security Council and getting them to validate the agreement and removal of sanctions, making it much harder for Congress to do anything effective after that action was taken. That is still a possible course of action. The administration is now talking out of both sides of its mouth on congressional review, as opposed to its normal behavior involving only the left side.
Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will hold hearings beginning April 14 on a bill that calls for congressional review of the Iran agreement if it is reached on or before June 30.
“The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to meet April 14 to consider Corker’s legislation,” The Associated Press reported on Corker’s bill. “The bill requires the president to transmit, within five days of reaching a final deal, the text of the full agreement along with materials related to its implementation.”
President Obama made it clear that he did not consider the Iran deal a treaty, and the president’s executive actions in this case were prerogatives a president needed to retain.
“Obama told The New York Times in a weekend interview that he insists on preserving the president’s right to enter into binding agreements with foreign powers without congressional approval,” The Associated Press reported.
So what exactly will be the review role for Congress if the Corker legislation passes? If the legislation calls for congressional review of a deal after it has been signed but provides no congressional ability to either accept or reject it, then that legislation is toothless, and both Democrats in Congress and the president will be happy to back it. If, on the other hand, the agreement’s fate hangs with Congress, then Obama is sure to veto the legislation, and then the House and Senate would need a two-thirds vote to override the veto. Again, this override would not be on a rejection of the deal at this point, but rather an override on the process after a deal is signed — the ability of Congress to reject it at a future date (after June 30). If Congress successfully overrode a presidential veto on the process that would occur after June 30, which would allow an up or down vote to review the final deal, the president could still veto a rejection of the deal. In this case another override would be necessary, meaning a two-thirds vote in Congress. And the administration might argue that any congressional action is an unconstitutional overstep into executive authority and ignore any congressional rejection. As a result, the Supreme Court would get to decide what authority each branch has in these matters.
Republicans now control both the Senate and the House. Assuming all Republicans voted the same way, 13 Democratic senators and 45 Democrats in the House would need to join the Republicans for an override of a veto. That seems very unlikely at this point, especially in the House, where the Congressional Black Caucus seems to be at war with Israel, or at least its prime minister — an attitude that will drive many progressive Democrats to take the same position. In the Senate, New York Senator Chuck Schumer could be the one figure who could rally enough Democrats to cross the hurdle in that body, but with the role of Senate minority leader or majority leader out there for him in the next Congress, the always self-serving senator is unlikely to take on the president of his party and prove to be a profile in courage. Some cynics are already suggesting that everyone knows there will be no override, so members are basically playing a game themselves to line up one way or the other for maximum political benefit for 2016, but with no impact on the Iran deal itself.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems aware at this point that the chances Congress will kill a bad deal are slim to none. As a result, he has taken a different tack, of releasing suggested modifications to the deal that he would prefer to see in the final agreement.
Regrettably, the Israeli attempt at pushing the Obama administration to firm up its negotiating posture and be the side that needs concessions from the other given its own domestic politics will also likely be unsuccessful. After all, an Iranian journalist who defected during the talks claimed that the Americans were serving as Iran’s agent with the rest of the P5+1 nations to make sure they gave the Iranians as much as they needed to get them to agree. French media reports have said much the same thing. Would the White House risk the deal to get a better deal? That is not a question for serious people at this point.
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