GOP warns Iran and White House

Washington (CNN)The GOP is so committed to thwarting President Barack Obama's deal-making with Iran that it resorted to a tactic it has long condemned him for using -- writing a letter to Tehran.

In an unusual and controversial challenge to presidential authority that ignited a fierce new row with the White House, 47 Republican senators warned the Iranian government Monday that any deal it reaches with Obama might not be worth the paper it's written on once he leaves office in less than two years.

The move represents a serious escalation of the Republican campaign to disrupt Obama's bid to freeze Iran's nuclear program, one of the most significant national security challenges facing the United States and a key presidential legacy item.

It also underlines the fierce skepticism in Congress -- not confined to Republicans -- that Obama's diplomacy will substantially roll back Iran's nuclear weapons program, as well as the uncertainty that any deal would last.

Critics say the intervention by the senators marks a dangerous intrusion into the president's traditional power to conduct foreign policy.

'Nearly unprecedented'

"This is not right on procedural grounds," said Nicholas Burns, a former career U.S. diplomat who worked in senior roles for Republican and Democratic presidents and called the letter "nearly unprecedented" in his career.

It's "way ahead of the president and is unhelpful," he added. "The Constitution gives our president great authority to conduct foreign policy, and we can't be an effective nation when ... members of Congress try to direct the foreign policy of the United States in a negotiation."

Vice President Joe Biden meanwhile escalated a White House counter attack against Republicans who signed the letter with a blistering statement, in which he accused the GOP of ignoring two centuries of precedent and threatening to undermine the ability of future presidents to conduct negotiations on behalf of the United States.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/09/politics/republicans-letter-iran-nuclear-deal-obama/