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A rare bipartisan consensus is forming in the Capitol: Any final nuclear agreement that President Donald Trump strikes with Iran this year must get a vote in Congress.
Republicans who pressed Congress to debate then-President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal 11 years ago say the law requiring congressional review of US-Iran nuclear accords will apply to anything Trump settles on during the 60-day negotiation window.
Democrats agree, and some even argue that Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran — which Congress still hasn’t seen — should be subject to congressional debate.
The only real daylight between the parties on Iran is over whether the White House will take congressional consideration seriously, as Republicans hope, or try to ignore the Hill, as Democrats anticipate. Trump said on Tuesday he would send any future agreement to Congress, but it’s not clear how lawmakers might hold him accountable if he changes his mind.
“It’s very clear in federal law that the Senate gets to weigh in, and we will,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, told Semafor, but “I think they are absolutely going to try to circumvent it. … They don’t want this thing to be on the floor of the Senate.”
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., countered that the Trump administration has “good lawyers; they can read the law,” which clearly calls for submission to Congress.
“If the president strikes an agreement with the Iranians, it has to come before us,” Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., told Semafor. “My expectation, informed by the fact that so many Republicans have just gone on record and indicated the deal has to come through us for sanction, my expectation is they’ll want to put it before Congress.”
The White House, asked for comment, pointed to Trump’s remarks on Tuesday that “I like the idea” of sending any deal to the Hill.
The prospect of an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program remains hypothetical, however while lawmakers from Senate Majority Leader John Thune on down are still in the dark about what is in the memo Trump signed on Sunday.
Some GOP senators don’t think much of what they’ve heard so far about the memo, including indications that Iran may hold new sway over a reopened Strait of Hormuz and receive financial rewards once it meets benchmarks for winding down its nuclear program.
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, released a stern statement on Tuesday saying “a deal of this magnitude deserves thorough review.”
Iran would get some immediate benefits under Trump’s agreement even if a nuclear deal isn’t reached, such as the ability to sell oil, as The Wall Street Journal reported.
The early skepticism about those provisions suggests that some Republicans would defect on any resolution disapproving of a Trump nuclear deal — or, at a minimum, agonize about what to do.
“So far, it seems a bad deal. But I have not seen final details,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., whom Trump helped defeat in a Senate primary. “We spent anywhere from $25 to $100 billion … And we got 13 Americans dead, and we’ve not achieved any of the goals that we had at the outset.”
Cassidy added that he thought a future US-Iran nuclear agreement should be treated like a treaty, which requires ratification by the Senate with a two-thirds majority vote. Republicans argued the same of Obama’s deal, which would not have hit that threshold.
Ultimately, Obama lost several votes on his deal, including from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. In that vote, Republicans put forward a disapproval resolution that Democrats — then in the minority — filibustered.
“We’re going to need to be heard from on this if there’s a deal that deals with the nuclear program,” said Thune. He said he couldn’t comment on the substance of the deal, since he hasn’t seen the memo or had a briefing. He’s asking for both.
Know More
While some Democrats argue that even the Sunday memo could trigger scrutiny from Congress, they may not push that claim to the floor.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., one of the primary authors of the 2015 review law, said it “absolutely” would apply to any final deal and that a vote on the Trump-Iran memo is “worth discussing because, bluntly, this administration didn’t inform or consult Congress almost literally at any point during this war. So anything we can do to force some engagement in accountability we should be doing.”
But even with a clear law laying out steps for congressional consideration, Democrats warned that the GOP Congress wouldn’t necessarily force the issue if Trump tried to avoid a vote.
The White House will attempt to get around the law in the end, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told Semafor: “They’re going to say, ‘There’s certain things we can’t disclose to you, and as a consequence, are going to exercise the president’s authority.’ When Trump starts twisting arms, there are very few Republicans to resist it.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., was even more bearish on Trump seeking Congress’ input at any point: “The president’s been talking about an agreement for two months, and we still haven’t seen anything.”
Room for Disagreement
A number of congressional Republicans are defending Trump’s deal, but there aren’t many currently arguing that Congress shouldn’t get a vote on it.
In a sign that Republicans might prove more assertive than Democrats believe, some are warning that Trump could see his deal shredded by the next president if he doesn’t seek their votes.
“An executive agreement can last past a president, but it’s the option of the next president to be able to maintain that,” said Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. “If you’re going to have long legs on it, it’s got to be through Congress.”
Burgess, Lauren, and Adrian’s View
Presidents don’t especially like bringing their foreign policy deals before Congress, but at the moment there is strong demand in both parties for Trump to do so when it comes to Iran.
If he does try to go around lawmakers, we’d expect complaints from both parties. Republicans have shown more interest in independence from Trump in recent weeks, blasting his “anti-weaponization” fund but ultimately declining to kill it.
If Trump tries to cut them out on Iran, they’d need to do more than protest to overcome potential resistance from the administration.
Notable
- Vice President JD Vance told Fox News the deal is designed so that if Iran behaves in the “right way” then “they get a lot of benefits.”