Congress gets a voice on possible deal with Iran
As negotiations to curtail Iran’s nuclear program have progressed, Congress has not exactly covered itself with glory.
In a brazen political stunt last month, House Speaker John Boehner invited a foreign leader to undercut U.S. policy from the floor of Congress. Then Sen. Tom Cotton topped him. Joined by 46 other Republican senators, he sent a grossly irresponsible letter to Iran warning that a future president might not honor any deal President Obama negotiates.
To say the least, neither qualifies as an act of statesmanship.
But the compromise worked out this week by Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., to give Congress a voice in any deal might.
Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is 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, and the Senate and House are expected to approve Corker’s compromise soon. 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 had 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 measure doesn’t pretend to resolve the contentious debate over Iran. How could it? Critical details won’t be known until a June 30 deadline. But it does bring sorely needed order to the process. It also buys time for sober discussion of the consequences, which stand to be historic — and dangerous — in ways the public doesn’t yet grasp.
In Obama’s view, Iran’s program will be limited and inspected so aggressively that its potential to secretly produce a bomb would be thwarted for at least a decade. 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.
The alternative view — most eloquently expressed last week in
The Wall Street Journal by former secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz — is far more ominous.
They argue that reliable inspections might be unattainable and that reimposing international sanctions might be impossible. More broadly, the ex-secretaries fear that a still radical Iran would escalate its aggression, potentially setting off a nuclear arms race in the world’s most dangerous region.
It is a fateful choice that should require a degree of consensus.
In that context, Corker’s requirement that the president get the backing of at least one-third of one chamber of Congress (the minimum to sustain a veto) does not seem like a very high bar. And for Republicans eager to show that they can govern, not just grumble, the senator’s old-school approach is something they would be wise to emulate.