As the Corker-Menendez bill requiring a congressional vote on the nuclear deal with Iran heads to the floor of the Senate this week, many in the Republican leadership are urging their caucus to pass the bill just as it is without amendments. Having forged a compromise with some Democrats to get it through the foreign affairs committee by a unanimous vote, Chairman Bob Corker believes his bill is still “pretty strong” because it allows Congress a voice on the Iran deal. He and other GOP leaders believe changes that would force the administration to hold Iran accountable for its support for terrorism or even to change it so as to make it a treaty would scuttle the entire effort. They may be right about that since the administration and many Democrats would like nothing better than to let the president cut a deal with Iran without Congress having any say in the matter. But without such changes, it’s fair to ask whether Corker’s assessment of his bill is any different than Obama’s deal. Is a weak Iran bill better than no bill at all? Maybe not.
The purpose of the Corker-Menendez bill is a noble one. Faced with an administration that was determined not only to press ahead with the most important diplomatic pact signed by the United States in a generation but to do so without allowing Congress to play its constitutionally mandated role to ratify such a deal, the Senate needed to act. What Corker and Robert Menendez, a stern critic of the administration’s Iran policy and the former ranking Democrat on the committee, intended to do was to create a mechanism by which the Senate could act as a possible brake on the president’s appeasement of the Islamist regime.
But over the course of the debate about the bill a couple of things soon became clear.
One was that the bipartisan consensus within Congress about the need to stop Iran’s nuclear program quickly broke down once the president made it clear to Democrats that he considered support for his Iran policy as a litmus test of party loyalty. That was first illustrated by the White House’s attempt to orchestrate a boycott of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress on the issue. But even after that effort flopped, the administration worked hard to twist the arms of wavering Democrats in order to persuade them to oppose a tough Iran sanctions bill that would have put more heat on Tehran to make concessions as well as the Corker-Menendez proposal. While a veto-proof majority on both ideas seemed likely a few months ago, once the president laid down the law to liberals on Iran, it was obvious that Corker would have to start making compromises if his bill was going to succeed.
The second was that once the negotiations over passing Corker-Menendez started, it was also clear that it was the president and the not the Republican majority that held all the cards in the bargaining. The president pushed ahead to get a weak framework deal with Iran agreed to by the end of March, a development that made critics wonder if they were going to be able to weigh in on the issue before it was too late.
More than that, the administration realized that the way the Corker bill was structured gave them an enormous advantage. The Constitution requires a two-thirds affirmative vote to pass a treaty. But by calling this far-reaching pact a mere agreement between the Iranians and the West, President Obama sought to evade that rule altogether. He wanted to have no vote at all on the deal but once he realized that even Democrats didn’t feel comfortable going along with a complete abnegation of their constitutional duties, the president’s path was clear. So long as it didn’t declare the Iran deal a treaty, passing Corker-Menendez actually served the administration’s purpose.
Provided the bill was stripped of measures that would provide some real accountability on the content of a deal that offers Iran two paths to a bomb—one by easily evading its weak restrictions and another by abiding by it and patiently waiting for it to expire—a congressional vote along these lines would give a legitimacy to the process that the administration needed. Moreover, the Corker bill created a reverse confirmation process by which the president needed only 34 votes—enough to sustain a veto of a vote that rejected the deal—rather than 67 in order for it to become law. Thus, after loyal Democrats on the committee got Corker to take out provisions that would make it more onerous for the administration to defend a weak deal, the president signaled that he would sign the bill.
The bill is now being praised as a rare example of bipartisanship. But though Corker’s intentions may have been good, the result is not. No matter how bad the Iran deal is, it’s obvious that the president will be able to pressure enough Democrats to back him to sustain a veto. If his bill doesn’t provide real accountability and actually gives the president a path to passage of a deal with only 34 Democratic votes, then all their effort will have been for nothing. Indeed, it will be worse than nothing since Obama will be able to say that he has given Congress a say even if he has vetoed their rejection of the deal. That’s why rather than being another suicide charge in the manner of the 2013 government shutdown, efforts to amend the Corker bill are actually the right thing to do.
In particular, Senator Ron Johnson’s amendment that would force the Senate to treat the Iran deal as a treaty that would require the normal two-thirds majority for passage deserves the support of the chamber. So, too, do measures proposed to require the administration to certify that Iran is no longer supporting terrorism (a point that was strengthened this past weekend as Israel attempted to interdict arms shipments from Iran to Hezbollah).
Democrats may not be willing to support strengthening the bill, but contrary to the assertions of its supporters, the “clean” bill as it currently stands may be worse than nothing at all. Efforts to compel senators take a stand on treaty status and terrorism may be the last chance to put them on record as being willing to support a measure that would actually prevent the president from sacrificing U.S. security and the stability of the Middle East on the altar of his vain pursuit of détente with Iran. These amendments may be poison pills, but the real poison is a bill that will give a seal of approval on a tragic foreign policy blunder.