The Corker Bill: Sensible Oversight on an Iran Deal

In recent days, the White House has unleashed a full-court press seeking to block a skeptical Congress from passing further Iran sanctions. In his State of the Union, President Obama threatened a presidential veto; at a recent Senate Banking Committee hearing, senior administration officials argued that new sanctions “are more likely to undermine, rather than enhance, the chances of achieving a comprehensive solution, and...the chances of sustaining and increasing pressure on Iran if the negotiations fail.” The pressure seems to be having an effect: Yesterday, the leading Democratic advocates for new sanctions---including the Foreign Relations Committee’s Ranking Member, Senator Bob Menendez---announced they will hold off until the end of March. Other senators concerned with the negotiations are advancing along a different track. Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is pushing for legislation that would demand that any final deal be submitted to Congress for its consideration and approval. Judging from the questions and comments at yesterday’s committee hearings, Corker’s proposal seems to be gathering support on both sides of the the aisle. But although reports have noted the proposal’s appeal as an alternative to White House-opposed sanctions, the substance of Corker’s bill has not attracted much discussion--no doubt, in part, because its text is still not final. But there are some things that can already be said. According to a senate aide familiar with Corker’s proposal, the framework created in the bill--which is partially based on earlier version submitted last July--would closely resemble that of Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act. Section 123 requires that any “significant” US nuclear cooperation with other countries meet certain criteria and be submitted to Congress, and lays out procedures for Congress to consider the agreement. Implementation is delayed for 90 days while Congress examines and can vote on the agreement. If the President certifies that the agreement meets all criteria, and an explicit joint resolution of disapproval fails to pass, then the agreement goes into effect at the end of the waiting period. Corker’s bill would operate similarly (although it would likely not include specific criteria and a shorter timeframe), delaying implementation of any agreement with Iran until Congress has the opportunity to weigh in. After the study period, only if Congress affirmatively passed a resolution of disapproval  (likely over the president’s veto) would an agreement be killed. Crafters of the bill claim it has several advantages. First, unlike the Kirk-Menendez sanctions, they point out that no one has yet suggested that mandating Congressional approval for a final deal could scuttle the talks. Second, they argue it prevents the president from unilaterally ending sanctions himself through a series of supposedly temporary suspensions. And third, they suggest that making clear to the Iranians that Congress must sign off on any deal will strengthen the president’s hand in negotiations. Now, Iranian negotiators who complain about needing to satisfy hard-liners around Ayatollah Khamenei can be met by Western negotiators warning that they need to satisfy Congress. Nevertheless, White House officials have already begun to resist Corker’s proposal. At yesterday’s committee hearing, for instance, Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken argued that such a bill would set a precedent allowing the Congress to encroach on traditional executive prerogatives, and would hinder the president’s ability to test Iranian compliance before bringing an agreement to a vote. Objections such as Blinken’s are, however, difficult to take very seriously. Congress constantly weighs in on everything from trade deals to fishing agreements, and it has demanded immediate notification of “any international agreement to which the United States is party” since the Case-Zablocki Act of 1972. Certainly, Section 123 of the AEA seems to offer not only a model, but ample precedent for mandating Congressional discussion of the United States' most important agreements. And specifically in the case of rogue regimes cutting deals to retain elements of their nuclear programs, we have a preexisting n of 1: North Korea. Of course, the Bush administration’s handling of those negotiations hardly seems something worth emulating. Those who worry that Iran has seized control of the negotiations have concrete reasons for their fears. In the last half-decade, they have watched American demands drop from “dismantling” the Iranian program to creating a one-year break-out buffer zone. They have seen Iran’s influence rise in a region where Sunni extremism and the Islamic State sometimes to pose an even more terrifying threat. And they have heard President Obama misleadingly sell an interim agreement as the sort of status-quo with which we could live--one which has “halted the progress of [Iran’s] nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.” (The Washington Post, which characterized the statement as containing “significant factual errors,” pointed out that over the course of the agreement centrifuge components have proliferated and Iran’s nuclear material expanded by a “bomb’s worth.”) Critics’ insistence that Congress weigh in on a final deal has ample precedent, and their fears that the current balance of power in negotiations may lead to an unsatisfactory deal are not unfounded. Corker’s bill may be the best way to assuage those fears, and even more importantly, ensure they don’t become realities.