Sen. Bob Corker and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell talk about congressional oversight of an Iran nuclear deal at a news conference after the weekly Senate Republican policy luncheon March 3.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
said Tuesday afternoon that the Senate will vote next week on a bill that would require congressional approval of any deal struck between the United States, five other nations and Iran over its nuclear program. McConnell's statement followed shortly after a
speech to Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said the negotiations have produced a "bad deal" that "paves Iran's path to the bomb."
The president has said he will veto the bill. At least one of the bill's Democratic sponsors, Tim Kaine of Virginia, is none too happy with McConnell's announcement.
The bill—the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015—a retooled version of a bill put forth in July, was introduced last Friday by the newly seated Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker. Unlike his previous bill, which went nowhere because it had no Democratic sponsors, this one does. Five of them, in fact, headed by the ranking member of the committee, Democratic hawk Bob Menendez of New Jersey, plus independent Angus King of Maine.
That bipartisan backing seems likely to attract many more Democrats. Indeed, Jim Lobe—the Washington Bureau Chief of Inter Press Service—warns that the bill has a chance of gaining a veto-proof majority. President Obama has already vowed to veto it.
If the bill survived a veto, it would require Obama to provide the full text of the deal to Congress and reasons for believing Iran would comply with it. It also would mandate that the "President may not waive, suspend, reduce, provide relief from, or otherwise limit the application of statutory sanctions" on Iran for 60 days while the deal is reviewed by Congress.
The administration and its Democratic backers say that passing the bill would screw up the difficult negotiations to limit aspects of Iran's nuclear program and provide verifiable assurances that Tehran is only running a peaceful nuclear program, as it has insisted since 2002. The negotiations have been going on for 20 months and have glided past two deadlines without an agreement. The administration has been emphatic that there will not be a third extension of the talks. The current deadline is March 31.
More on the bill below the fold.
In his statement of objections to debating the bill next week, Sen. Kaine said:
"I believe the effort by the Republican leadership to force the bill to the floor prior to full committee consideration is contrary to the important interests at stake. Premature action also disrespects the ongoing work to build a broad coalition of colleagues in support of this bill," Kaine said in a statement. "Congress should weigh in on any Iranian nuclear deal that impacts the statutory sanctions we've enacted. But we need to demonstrate that our review will be thoughtful and deliberate rather than rushed and partisan.”
Corker, however, said last week when he introduced the bill that he wanted to send it from the committee to the full Senate the second week of March.
If the bill were to pass before the end-of-the-month deadline, it would certainly make the negotiations more difficult than they already are if not kill them outright. The move would play directly into the hands of Iran's hardliners. The attitude toward Iran of many U.S. hawks—Democrat and Republican—is similar to that of several high-level members of the Reagan cabinet regarding the Soviet Union. In the mid-'80s, with Mikhail Gorbachev moving into power, that attitude was that there was nobody but hardliners in the Kremlin and they couldn't be negotiated with.
But even if Congress waited to pass Corker's bill until after the March deadline, it would still be a bad piece of work.
One critic is Ed Levine of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and Council for a Livable World. He's written a detailed analysis of the bill and its impacts. [Paragraph breaks have been added to the original to improve readability]:
The Bottom Line: Senators should consider the Corker bill, S. 615, very carefully. Do they really want to send a message to Tehran that the President may be unable to fulfill his commitments? Do they really want to move the goalposts by adding support for terrorism to the list of reasons for reinstating sanctions? The Corker bill will endanger both the negotiations and the sanctions regime; it does not merit support.
1. It could help Iran’s own hard-liners to scuttle the negotiations.
2. The process established for congressional review is rushed and impractical.
3. It will delay U.S. compliance with any agreement by up to 65 days.
4. It moves the goalposts by adding Iranian support for terrorism into the
negotiations.
5. In the wake of failed negotiations, it could cause our P5+1 negotiating partners to abandon the international sanctions on which we have relied to encourage Iranian flexibility.
Here are some of Levine's details about number 2:
The U.S. separation of powers, in contrast to a parliamentary system, has always made negotiations more difficult. U.S. negotiating partners have never had complete certainty that the United States would make good on its commitments. A second major challenge for Congress, then, if it wants to influence negotiations before they are concluded, is to push the negotiations in the desired direction without undercutting U.S. negotiators by leaving them unable to assure other countries that an agreement with us will, in fact, be implemented.
The challenge is all the greater in this case, as Iran has distrusted the United States for many years (mainly because we once overthrew its government and later supported Iraq when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran), and the ability of the United States to influence Iran is dependent in large measure on our ability to maintain broad international support for the U.S. position and for the international economic sanctions regime. [...]
The failings of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act begin with subsection (a)(1) of the new Section 135 that the bill would add to the Atomic Energy Act. The requirement to submit an agreement to Congress "not later than 5 calendar days after reaching an agreement with Iran" is an invitation to congressional error. An Iran nuclear agreement will not be a treaty, but even if it were, treaties are not normally submitted to Congress until they have been thoroughly analyzed by the executive branch.
Importantly, they are submitted with an authoritative section-by-section analysis prepared by the Office of the Legal Adviser in the Department of State. The process of analyzing an agreement and preparing the section-by-section analysis often takes a few months. That passage of time gives both Congress and the executive time to raise and consider any concerns that the agreement might occasion. It also affords a certain cooling off period before any congressional action is taken. The Corker bill, by contrast, would not give Congress the time needed for truly reasoned consideration of an agreement. Rather, it would encourage a vote in each house of Congress before any careful legal analysis of the agreement could be brought to bear.
Levine continues in detail about muddled and contradictory wording, some of which makes no sense on its face and some of which, taken literally, would bar various peaceful purposes as well perhaps as the building of warships powered by nuclear reactors, something that is not covered by the Non-Proliferation Treaty and not illegal under international law.
Jennifer Bendery reports that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who has been enjoying his fly-in-the-ointment role since the Republican majority came to power in January, may have something in mind to keep the bill from reaching the floor next week. "As we learned, and I hope [McConnell] learned, saying you're going to be debating something doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen," Reid said.
UPDATE
12:08 PM PT: Sen. Bob Menendez said he is pulling his support for the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act: “There is no emergency, this deal – if there is one – won’t be concluded until almost summer. Let’s do this the right way. I know I cannot object to the Rule 14 process under the rules, but I say to my colleagues, if this is the process then I will have no choice but to use my voice and vote against any motion to proceed to the bill.”