Congress voted itself 'irrelevant' on Iran

Whatever Congress does now regarding the Iran deal brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry, which already has been rubber-stamped by the U.N. and endorsed by the European Union, is irrelevant.

But after all, that's what Congress voted for.

Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh explained the details of the legislative process Monday, noting it is being controlled by the bill sponsored by Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., which was supposed to allow Congress to review the nuclear agreement.

And it does that.

But it also turns on its head the process through which the U.S. adopts treaties. Although it's not called a treaty, the Iran deal fits the definition: an agreement under international law entered into by sovereign states.

Treaties must be approved by a two-thirds vote in the U.S. Senate. But the Iran deal needs only one-third of the vote, meaning it would take a massive two-thirds vote to defeat it.

Limbaugh said it marked "the official loss of United States sovereignty."

"And by that I mean the United Nations Security Council has endorsed the United States and the other five nations involved in this Iran nuclear deal before the United States Congress has weighed in," he said.

The deal was sent to Congress Monday to start its 60-day review. But on that day, the U.N. and the European Union put their stamps of approval on the plan.

"It is a balanced deal that means Iran won't get an atomic bomb," said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. "It is a major political deal."

Limbaugh asked: "Why did he [Obama] go to the U.N. first [before Congress]? Right, well, not just to build unbeatable support, but this is to obviate and render needless and irrelevant the United States Congress. 'Cause what do you think those mealy mouths are gonna do once the U.N.'s passed it? I can't see a bunch of Democrat senators standing up."

He put the blame squarely on the Corker plan.

"The Corker bill turns the treaty ratification process upside-down and inside-out. The Corker bill is an absolute joke. If this isn't a treaty, I don't know what's a treaty. This is a treaty, although it's not a treaty. … Standard operating procedure in the old days up to Obama, this is a treaty, and the U.S. Senate ratifies treaties by two-thirds vote."

But he said Corker sets up "just the opposite" for the Iran deal.

"The Corker bill requires two-thirds of the Congress to vote against it. … The regime takes their agreement with Iran to the United Nations specifically to do an end run around the U.S. Congress, to make the U.S. Congress irrelevant. ... So now the U.N. endorses it, happily, and with great fanfare. So what's the U.S. Congress supposed to do?"

According to Kerry, Congress really is out of the lineup on the issue.

He told CBS News that if Congress rejects the deal, it will free Iran from any "restraints" on its actions and will alienate American allies.

"We will be viewed as having killed the opportunity to stop them from having a weapon. They will begin to enrich again, and the greater likelihood is what the president said the other day, you'll have a war," he said.

And, he said, if there's no approval from Congress, it's no big deal.

"I don't think that undermines this deal. This deal will stand ultimately on the fact that there's unprecedented inspection, unprecedented access, unprecedented restraint in their program, which they've agreed to," Kerry said.

Never was the extraneous role of Congress to the Iran agreement more obvious than on Monday, when two international organizations approved it even before Congress had a chance for review.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously endorsed the deal, National Public Radio reported.

The terms will free Iran from worldwide economic sanctions and require Tehran to open up its nuclear facilities periodically for inspections.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who is running for president, called it "capitulation Monday."

"History will remember July 20, 2015, as Obama's Capitulation Monday, the day two sworn enemies of the United States were able to out-maneuver President Obama to secure historic concessions," Rubio said. "Monday's events at the U.N., Washington and Havana leave no doubt that we have entered the most dangerous phase of the Obama presidency in which the president is flat-out‎ abandoning America's vital national security interests to cozy up to the world's most reprehensible regimes."

Several GOP members running for president have promised to overturn the deal, but conservative analyst Pat Buchanan says it likely is too late.

"Before the party commits to abrogating the Iran deal in 2017, the GOP should consider whether it would be committing suicide in 2016," he wrote. "For even if Congress votes to deny Obama authority to lift U.S. sanctions on Iran, the U.S. will vote to lift sanctions in the U.N. Security Council. And Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, all parties to the deal, will also lift sanctions.

"A congressional vote to kill the Iran deal would thus leave the U.S. isolated, its government humiliated, unable to comply with the pledges its own secretary of state negotiated. Would Americans cheer the GOP for leaving the United States with egg all over its face?

"And if Congress refuses to honor the agreement, but Iran complies with all its terms, who among our friends and allies would stand with an obdurate America then?

"Israel would applaud, the Saudis perhaps, but who else?" he wrote.

Andrew McCarthy wrote wrote at National Review that the best solution is "to end the Kabuki theater."

"The Corker bill and its ballyhooed 60-day review process that undermines the Constitution is a sideshow. If you scrutinize President Obama's Iran nuclear deal, you find that the president ignores the existence of the Corker process. So should Congress. Obama's Iran deal also ignores the existence of Congress itself – at least, of the United States Congress," he wrote.

He said the U.S. Constitution "is a nullity in the eyes and actions of this imperial White House."

"Enough is enough – way beyond enough," he wrote. "The Congress, particularly the Senate, has not only a clear justification but a constitutional duty to scrap the legally defective and, now, factually nigh-irrelevant Corker review process, codified as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015."

He noted that the deal was to address Iran's nuclear program, but instead it also sets up provisions for other weapons.

"In other words, Obama would collude with other countries, but without congressional participation, to modify America's international legal commitments.," he said.

"Of course, you may have been under the impression – perhaps from reading our quaint Constitution from those dark pre-Fundamental Transformation days – that We the People are sovereign, that our government must take its marching orders from us. To the contrary, President Obama is claiming in his Iran deal that he – unilaterally and without congressional advice, consent, or legislation – may huddle with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the Chinese Communist government, some European leaders, and our Iranian enemies to devise enforceable law."

McCarthy said the reality is that international law does not obligate the U.S. to do anything "unless it has been crafted under our constitutional requirements," which, he noted, Obama has largely ignored.

Limbaugh said Obama's goal was to "circumvent the U.S. Constitution."

"He's got the Corker bill, and the Corker bill is designed to give Obama what he wants. … It makes opposing this thing practically impossible. It turns the Senate treaty ratification process upside-down.

"To me, this is the story of the day because it's symbolic, emblematic of what has been happening with this administration from the get-go and what's ahead of us. Call it globalization or whatever, this country is being cut down to size to the point that it is no different than any other nation on the face of the earth."

He said the U.S. "didn't get diddly-squat" out of the months of negotiations.

"We didn't get a retraction from their promise to wipe us out. We didn't get a retraction from their promise to wipe out the Israelis. We did not get inspections," he said.

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