Congress unpatriotic in curtailing Iran nuclear program

In the weeks before President Obama announced that negotiators had agreed on a framework for curtailing Iran's nuclear program, Congress hardly covered itself with glory — or even acted responsibly.

From House Speaker John Boehner's brazenly political stunt (inviting a foreign leader to undercut U.S. foreign policy from the House floor) to Sen. Tom Cotton's strikingly irresponsible letter (warning Iran that a future president might not honor any deal Obama signs), Republicans have acted in a manner that they would declare unpatriotic in other circumstances.

In that context, the compromise patiently worked out last week by Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., to give Congress a voice in any prospective deal with Iran is a productive change of pace.

Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is every bit as skeptical of the Iran negotiations as his more bellicose colleagues. But rather than rant or disrupt, he worked quietly for months to get his way. By last week, he had built a veto-proof majority for legislation that would force Obama — over the president's vehement objections — to submit any deal to Congress for approval.

On Tuesday, Obama reluctantly yielded to the inevitable, and the Senate and House are expected to approve Corker's compromise this week. If an Iran deal is completed — still no sure thing — Congress would get 30 days to block it, followed by 12 days for Obama to veto, then 10 additional days for Congress to override that veto.

Those are shorter time frames than Corker originally proposed, and along with other concessions that weeded out deal-killing provisions, they were enough to draw key Democrats into Corker's artfully constructed coalition.

The legislation doesn't pretend to resolve the contentious debate over Iran. How could it? The stakes are historic, and critical details won't even be known until a June 30 deadline for completing negotiations is reached. But it does the next best thing: It brings order to the process and, with it, at least a sliver of hope for national unity when that process is done.

Regardless of where one stands on the Iran negotiations, this should be seen as a good thing, affording time and structure for a decision guaranteed to have far-reaching consequences.

In the optimistic view put forth by Obama, a good deal would usher in limitations on Iran's program, backed by inspections that would credibly push back Iran's "breakout time" for producing a weapon to a year, vs. weeks or months now. Tensions would ease as Iran complied and sanctions fell away, strengthening moderates, drawing Iran into the community of nations, and reducing the likelihood of war — either to attack the Iranian program or to defend against Iran's aggression in the region.

But that scenario draws plenty of skepticism — most eloquently expressed last week in a Wall Street Journal column by former secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz.

They argue that reliable inspections might be unattainable and that reimposing international sanctions once they are removed might be impossible. More broadly, the ex-secretaries believe that Iran — revolutionary, theocratic and flush with money from the easing of sanctions — would escalate its aggression, not retreat from it, potentially setting off a nuclear arms race in the world's most dangerous region.

Opposing view: Congress changes rules

Congress should play an appropriate oversight role over a nuclear deal with Iran. Unfortunately, the proposed Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act is not oversight but instead an extraordinary effort to undermine the president's ability to conduct diplomacy and change the rules of the game on our negotiators in the middle of high-stakes negotiations.

By inserting itself directly into the negotiations, Congress risks weakening the United States' negotiating hand and triggering blowback from Iran that could derail the best chance to peacefully resolve the Iranian nuclear dispute.

At its core, this bill threatens to revoke the president's authority to waive sanctions on Iran. Congress had included these waivers in every Iran sanctions legislation it passed so as not to tie the president's hands and to enable sanctions to be traded in for a deal. U.S. diplomats entered the Iran talks assuming these waivers were part of their toolkit, and structured their negotiating strategy accordingly.

Now, with the president on the cusp of a deal, Congress wants to take back those waivers. The bipartisan compromise would revoke the waivers for a 30-day "congressional review" and provide for a vote to revoke the waivers permanently. The effect would be to kill a deal.

Even if this move does not derail the negotiations, it may complicate them significantly. By changing the rules and threatening to renege on U.S. commitments, Congress has put Iran in a stronger negotiating position. Iran could demand more concessions to cover the risk that Congress votes down a final deal, and could use congressional interference to divide the six nations negotiating with Iran. If no final deal is reached, Congress has given Iran a strong hand to shift the blame to the U.S. and begin unraveling sanctions.

Jamal Abdi is policy director for the National Iranian American Council.