Since the Obama administration’s announcement of the nuclear deal with Iran, the body politic has erupted in a confusing discourse, arguing the relative merits of the deal’s limitations on Iranian centrifuges, nuclear facilities, nuclear material and inspections.
The debate is loud and sharp, but ultimately self-defeating.
The “fix” is in.
A pro-forma review reveals that this deal has little if anything to do with genuine American strategic interests in the Middle East, and everything to do with President Obama’s foreign policy legacy. When your goal is a signing ceremony, the process of negotiation boils down to minimalism in the quest to get to “yes.”
If the details in the Iran deal aren’t enough to prove this, the rigged ratification process that Obama designed surely is.
Article II, Section II of the Constitution reads, “He [POTUS] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.” That translates into 67 out of 100 Senators.
But Obama refused to agree.
The Administration called the emerging Iran deal “an Executive agreement” that did not require Senate approval. Presented with an audacious challenge to its institutional power, Congress folded like a house of cards. Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) holds particular responsibility here.
After much behind the scenes negotiation, Obama ultimately agreed to submit the agreement for congressional review provided that: 1) it would be voted on in both Houses (therefore diminishing the Advise and Consent role of the Senate), 2) that a limitation be put in place on the amount of time Congress could take to act (60 days), and 3) that the core threshold for support enshrined in the Constitution be effectively reversed. Instead of requiring 67 votes to approve the Iran deal, the law codifying the terms of debate and approval for the nuclear agreement requires the opposition to come up with 2/3rds in both the House and Senate to reject the agreement.
Translated into raw numbers, if 148 House Members vote in favor of the deal (there are 188 Democrats in the House) and 34 Senators do the same, (there are 46 Democrats in the Senate), the deal is approved.
It’s a travesty.
But that’s not POTUS’s only insurance.
As part of the P5+1 that negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran, the Administration is moving with all due haste to draft a UN Resolution that will lift Iranian sanctions based on the agreement. That in turn, will release a tidal wave of global interest in re-engaging with Iran, seeking lucrative business deals.
If the UN Security Council acts before Congress does – likely since Congress goes on its month-long August recess in a week – then the US will suddenly be the odd man out. With the rest of the world already running to embrace Iran, any negative congressional action would be nothing more than closing the barn door after the horses had run out.
And even better for President Obama, he could then immediately blame congressional Republicans for trying to defeat a deal that other nations of the world had already embraced. The Administration and its supporters would have a field day turning legitimate criticism of a fundamentally flawed agreement into a narrative of petty and punitive political actions by a GOP obsessed with opposing POTUS.
If there are Democrats skeptical of the deal, and there are no doubt a few who are wrestling with this sellout to the Mullahs, watching the international community move decisively behind the agreement, and making America into a pariah, will be all that is necessary to move them into Obama’s column.
Obama will get his legacy achievement, and in all likelihood, another Nobel prize.
Unfortunately, it will be his successors who will pay the price for Obama’s hubris, ego and fundamental disrespect for powers and precedents of the government that he was elected to lead.