If it looks like a deal, and smells like a deal, then Congress has the power to reject it. That is the message lawmakers are sending the White House as administration officials try to strike a new bargain with Iran over its nuclear program.
President Joe Biden should pay heed, or risk making the same mistakes as his two predecessors — and doom any agreement to failure.
After indirect parleys through Oman, the Biden team has agreed to release payments owed to the Islamic Republic that have long been frozen by sanctions. Officials with knowledge of the negotiations have said Tehran has in turn agreed to free three Americans wrongfully detained in Iranian prisons, as it did three Europeans earlier this month. The ransom for the hostages may be in the region of $10 billion, in the form of sanctions waivers that allow Iraq to pay about $2.7 billion it owes Iran for natural-gas shipments, and South Korea to transfer $7 billion for previous oil purchases.
More significantly, the U.S. is offering Iran the opportunity to export more oil if it will limit its uranium-enrichment levels and cooperate more fully with United Nations nuclear monitors. But the Biden administration is leery of using the “D” word to describe such a bargain. “Rumors about a nuclear deal, interim or otherwise, are false and misleading,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told journalists recently. “Our position on the question has not changed.”
In briefings with journalists, official have used expressions like “mini-agreement” and “interim arrangement.” But this is too cute by half and fools nobody.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, knows a deal when he sees one; he has told his officials that they can go ahead and make an agreement, providing the regime gets to keep its nuclear infrastructure. So does Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, the country with the most to fear from an unshackled Iran. He has told the Biden administration that he opposes “mini-agreements.”
What’s in a word? The answer: Congressional oversight. The Biden folks know that any deal with the Islamic Republic would need to be submitted to the legislative branch, where it would meet substantial bipartisan opposition from lawmakers who want tighter restraints on Iran. Surmounting such resistance would require the investment of political capital by a president who must husband what little he has for a long reelection campaign.
The nub is the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which was passed in 2015, just as the U.S. and other world powers were putting the finishing touches on the deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Having bypassed Congress in making that deal, President Barack Obama agreed to let lawmakers review the terms after the fact. Obama’s egregious misuse of executive power allowed his successor, Donald Trump, to torch the deal three years later.
Transparent as it is, the administration’s ruse reflects poorly on Biden. Presidents ignoring Congress on Iran policy is what brought us to this sorry pass in the first place.
Under the nuclear review act, the White House is required to periodically reassure Congress that Iran is keeping its end of the bargain. But the law also obliges the president to present before Congress any new or amended deal pertaining to Iran’s nuclear program. The lawmakers would then have a 30-day review period, and the opportunity to vote it down.
A few weeks ago, the Biden administration reassured Congress that it would abide by the provisions of Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act and submit any new deal with Iran for review and approval. But officials now hope they can avoid this scrutiny if they can plausibly deny that a new deal is being made.
Nice try. Representative Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote to the White House expressing concern about the latest talks and demanding that the administration submit “any arrangement or understanding” to Congress for review. Not all who disapprove are Republicans like McCaul: Plenty of Democrats in both houses are skeptical about making any kind of deal with Iran.
The most prominent of them, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, has suggested that the Biden administration’s outreach to Iran is “a good masquerade game.” He would be mighty upset to learn that the White House isn’t just playing.
If Biden feels a new deal is the right course, he should have the courage to run it through the Congressional gantlet. If he cannot do that, the president, himself a veteran of the legislative branch, should reflect on whether a deal that can’t bear the scrutiny of lawmakers is worth pursuing at all.
BOBBY GHOSH is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering foreign affairs.
