Republicans and many Democrats don't think that Iran's leaders, including President Hassan Rouhani, can be trusted on a nuclear deal.
Administration officials, including the president himself, are running
a vigorous lobbying effort to keep the Senate from passing a veto-proof bill that they feel could hamper negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. The administration has been engaged in direct talks with Iran on the matter for two years. The goal: a pact that would lift U.N. economic sanctions if the leadership in Tehran agrees to a verifiable curtailment of its nuclear development to ensure that it is for peaceful purposes only. Iran claims it has no intention of developing a nuclear bomb. But it is widely disbelieved, in part because of having conducted secret work at secret facilities in the past. The administration's often-stated objective is to keep Iran from ever building a bomb.
Many Republicans are in the bombbombbomb Iran faction. Their view is that Iran can never be trusted to comply with an agreement and that the only solution is to take out the nation's nuclear facilities. Other Republicans, a little less stupid than to clamber aboard the war wagon, support an agreement so intrusive and restrictive that there is no way Iran's reform-minded leaders would accept it, much less its hard-liners.
Forty-seven Republican senators in those two groups signed onto a letter to Iran's leaders drafted by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton. Condensed to its fundamentals, the unprecedented letter stated that any agreement signed by the administration now could be reversed as soon as President Obama leaves office in 22 months. Critics, including members of the administration, have blasted the letter as a violation of separation of powers. The 47 have been labeled in the media and among other critics as "traitors."
But it's not just Republicans the administration is concerned about. Several Democrats have indicated that they support the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 introduced in late February by the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker. A co-sponsor of the bill is the former chairman and now the committee's ranking Democrat, New Jersey's Bob Menendez. In fact, five of the bill's co-sponsors are Democrats. And one is the independent, Angus King of Maine.
Head below the fold for more on this story.
Those Democrats bristled at Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's efforts to fast-track the bill last week—opposition that scuttled the attempt. The original plan was to start debating the bill after March 24. The five co-sponsors and several other Democrats among the 11 who are said to be in favor of the bill are of a mixed mind about whether to support debating and voting on the bill before the June deadline for signing a deal with Iran. Manu Raju and Burgess Everett report:
With their caucus divided, Senate Democratic leaders are letting the White House mount the lobbying push on its own. Asked Tuesday whether he was encouraging his members to oppose the Corker-Menendez bill, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said flatly, “No.”
With virtually all 54 Republicans expected to back the bill, and 11 Senate Democratic Caucus members signaling their support, the White House has little margin for error in heading off a veto-proof majority. [...]
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who also co-sponsored the bill, said that it was “preferable” that Congress wait until after June to weigh in, but he wouldn’t say how he would vote before then.
Most liberals in Congress are standing in the president's corner on the bill, arguing that negotiations should not be interfered with while they are underway, the conduct of foreign policy having always leaned heavily on executive authority. The always implicit and sometimes explicit view is that Obama should be trusted to come up with a good agreement that not only puts the nuclear issue to rest, but also opens the door to future easing of tensions between two nations that have been at odds with each other for 36 years.
But that stance puts them in a philosophical bind. If the president's name right now was Tom Cotton, would they be so willing to stand aside as negotiations continued? Providing a check on executive power in the foreign policy arena has been a matter of concern for left-liberals since the Vietnam War. Allowing partisanship to determine when they stick with that wise view and when they abandon it ought to at the very least make them squirmy.