The Senate’s Iran Test

WSJ

After a partisan tempest, the Senate’s effort to require a vote of Congress on the Obama Administration’s impending nuclear-arms deal with Iran is back on track. With support for the Iran bill now approaching a veto-proof majority, the Administration’s negotiators must now factor in Senate approval for the terms of any deal.

Last Friday Tennessee’s Senator Bob Corker , Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, introduced the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015. The bill says President Obama must submit the text of any final Iran arms deal to Congress within 60 days to allow time for hearings and a vote.

In addition to New Jersey’s Robert Menendez , the committee’s ranking minority member, Democrats co-sponsoring the bill included Tim Kaine (Va.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), plus Maine Independent Angus King.

After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’s speech to Congress Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he would bring the Corker-Menendez bill directly to the floor next week for a vote, bypassing the normal committee markup procedures. An outcry erupted among Democrats over “regular order,” with some co-sponsors threatening to filibuster their own bill.

On Thursday afternoon Senator McConnell withdrew his intention to move the Iran bill directly to the floor. The result was remarkable: Four more Democrats now support the Iran-vote bill: Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Chris Coons (Del.) and Ben Cardin (Md.).

Add this group to the Senate’s Republicans and there currently are 64 Senators, three short of a veto-proof majority, who want to vote on the Obama Iran deal.

The Iran bill’s journey to this point says a lot about the state of Washington’s politics. Last Friday, within a nanosecond of the bill’s release, the White House put out that if the Corker bill got to the President’s desk, “he will veto it.” End of conversation.

It’s hard to think of another President who so wanted to rule by fiat, but alas for Mr. Obama those pesky Founding Fathers created a Congress, one of the three branches of America’s government.

Going back to the Kennedy Presidency, virtually every major arms-control agreement has been submitted to Congress for approval, which they got, generally after intense debate over the details (“The Senate and Iran’s Bomb,” Feb. 8). But not the Obama presidency.

Other than Secretary of State John Kerry’s negotiating team and some Iranians, no one knows what is in this historic nuclear-arms agreement. The White House position is that it will tell no one what it is doing, and once it has finished the agreement, it’s a done deal. Senator Robert Byrd , the late Democratic guardian of Congressional prerogatives, must be spinning in his grave like a centrifuge.

The White House’s my-way-or-the-highway on such an important agreement was too much even for Senator Kaine, an Obama loyalist. “I believe Congress should weigh in on the content of the deal,” Senator Kaine said, “given the centrality of the Congressional sanctions to the entire negotiation and the significant security interests involved.”

A vote of Congress in 2010 enacted the toughest of the existing economic sanctions on Iran, and Congress would have to vote to lift them permanently. The President has the authority to suspend these sanctions temporarily. The Corker bill prohibits any such waiving of sanctions during the 60 days Congress would have to vote.

Senator Kaine wants the status of the sanctions settled up front with a vote by Congress. Some Senators fear that if the President extended the “temporary” suspension of sanctions indefinitely, as Iran no doubt will demand, it would eviscerate Congress’s authority to impose such sanctions.

Senator McConnell deserves credit for restoring regular order and letting the Corker bill go to committee markup later this month. At stake is any conceivable future role for Congress in approving arms-control agreements. That this bill stands three votes from the needed 67 suggests that even this most willful of Presidents cannot dismiss Congress’s coequal constitutional role.