One of the first things on the agenda when Congress returned from its summer break this past Tuesday was to approve or disapprove the nuclear deal that the Obama administration and five other world powers had struck with the Iranian government earlier in the summer. Undeniably, this was an historic deal as it requires the Iranian government to significantly reduce its stockpiles of uranium, which is the key ingredient in a nuclear program, as well as to give up most of its centrifuges, which is the key piece of equipment that one needs to enrich uranium. Moreover, under the agreement, these limitations are toremain in place for at least ten years, which in theory should make the world a safer place to live during that entire period.
But my main concerns with the deal are these: the ability of the US and its allies to verify Iran’s compliance with its obligations may not be adequate, especially in light of Iran’s past deceptions on international agreements and continuing open hostility to the west and Israel. To begin with, UN inspection rights under the deal apply only to declared Iranian nuclear facilities. So if Iran decides to cheat and at some point to start secretly rebuilding its nuclear program outside of world view, for example in some sort of underground facility, there is no guarantee that we’ll find it before it’s too late. In addition, even where the UN possesses inspection rights, Iran has a counter right under the agreement to delay that inspection for up to 24 days if it disputes the grounds for the inspection, and during this time, there is nothing really to stop Iran from destroying or concealing any evidence of its violations.
Also, I am troubled by the fact that under the deal, shortly after implementation, the economic sanctions that the west has had in place against Iran for many years will be lifted, and as a result, tens of billions of dollars will flow back to the Iranian regime, which still proudly admits that it supports known middle eastern terrorist groups in their fight against Israel as well as the Syrian dictator, Assad. Could a substantial portion of these funds now being returned to Iran soon be re-routed for the benefit of terrorists and oppressors? Again, there doesn’t really seem to be any effective mechanism in place to stop that from happening. While it is true that the agreement calls for a reinstatement or “snap-back” in sanctions should any Iranian violations be discovered, as a practical matter, it will be very difficult to regain international consensus on putting them back in place. As former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schulz pointed out in their op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal several months ago, any future attempt by the US to “snap-back” sanctions will likely be opposed by powerful business and other special interests looking to isolate the US rather than Iran.
Nevertheless, this past Wednesday, Senate Democrats handed President Obama a major victory when they blocked a Republican resolution to reject the Iranian accord by filibuster. The Republicans needed at least 60 votes in the Senate to break the filibuster, but they were only able to collect 58, comprised of 54 Republicans and 4 Democrats, including the senior senator from New York, Chuck Schumer. If the Democratic filibuster had been broken and the House of Representatives had passed a similar resolution, the President would have been forced to veto it if he wanted the Iran deal to survive. The only way the Republicans could have overcome a presidential veto would have been with a two thirds majority.
One may ask: How is that possible? Doesn’t the US Constitution require that international treaties be ratified by a 2/3 majority vote of the Senate? The answer is apparently not as long as the president determines that the international agreement in question does not require a certain level of commitment from the US. But exactly what that level of commitment is is still far from clear in the case law, so controversy continues to swirl over whetherCongress’ proper role in this matter was improperly usurped by the executive branch.
1 comment:
I think you're last paragraph in this blog post points directly to the fact that the executive branch has assumed more power than the legislative branch in the last 8 years or so. The support of this comes from citizens and scholars and politicians alike who believe because congress is so frequently in a stalemate, and therefore "not getting anything done" that the President has to enact certain policies in order to initiate progress and change. This is really a huge deal, as our government is supposed to be designed in order to disallow one of it's entities from having too much power. The executive branch hasn't been tyrannical, persay, but there has certainly been some bills passed by executive order during Obama's presidency. There are a lot of questions someone could ask about this; first being, is this good for the country or not? By that I don't necessarily mean from a party view, but rather in the view of whether the executive branch counteracting congressional standstill by passing bills via executive order is good for the country or not. Perhaps in doing so, the executive branch may be giving congress more incentive to compromise, as they definitely would not the checks and balances of our federal government to be underutilized.
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