Senate committee vote on Iran a big win for Obama and diplomacy

Last week’s unanimous vote by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on legislation allowing congressional oversight of a potential nuclear deal with Iran has been interpreted by some as a setback to President Obama.

The opposite is the case. The fact is that the president’s patient and intricate diplomatic approach, along with other major world powers, to negotiating this historic agreement has gained real traction and it now seems highly unlikely that opponents of the deal could sabotage it through congressional action. This is an excellent development for it clears the way to a diplomatic resolution of a crisis that has plagued the international community for years.

{mosads}The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 in its amended form, as agreed between Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and ranking member Ben Cardin (D-Md.), removed key provisions in the original draft that threatened to kill nuclear negotiations with Iran. 

The senators essentially accepted the principle that the Iran nuclear deal should be examined, analyzed, debated and accepted or rejected on its own merits – but that extraneous issues, such as charges of Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, its part in other regional conflicts, its human rights record or its refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist should not be part of the discussion. The same principle held during the Cold War when the United States negotiated crucial nuclear arms control treaties with the Soviet Union despite the fact that the two superpowers remained deeply divided on a whole raft of other issues.

In effect, this legislation ensures that while Congress will have an opportunity to review the deal, the administration has secured a clear path to conclude negotiations without congressional interference. No doubt, if there is a deal, Republicans in Congress will seek to hold votes of disapproval – and since they have majorities in both chambers they may well prevail. However, as long as the president can maintain the support of one third of either chamber, he will be able to veto efforts to kill the agreement and his vetoes will be sustained.

By engaging Congress’s concerns and ensuring its oversight role in any final deal, the president scores significant domestic legitimacy points and gains substantial momentum in his foreign policy.

Obama seems on the verge of registering an even more significant victory for his worldview that the way to promote US interests in the world and to secure the safety of its allies lies not through military action but wherever possible through diplomacy. Truly effective diplomacy that advances America’s national and security interests entails reaching out to an entrenched adversary by breaking the inflexible mold of confrontation that has shaped our foreign policy toward Iran for the past 35 years. 

It also means rising above the urge to conceptually divide the world into those good guys worthy of cooperation and those dishonest countries that should be shunned. Like Henry Kissinger before them, Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have grasped the importance of limiting criticism of their negotiating partners’ domestic policies during the talks and not letting allies get in the way of their diplomatic maneuverings and thus impeding the pursuit of American interests, as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has attempted to do in the current negotiations.

The political framework announced on April 2 through a joint statement issued by the P5+1, the European Union, and Iran, and bolstered by a U.S. fact sheet, was a promising step toward a final agreement. The ongoing negotiations will most likely prove to be very challenging as key provisions are clarified and strengthened.

 To that end, the current compromise bill is likely to ensure that the United States and its partners remain in a strong position to obtain an adequate nuclear deal with Iran. By removing certification requirements that are beyond the scope of the negotiation talks, the compromise bill bolsters the president’s diplomatic strategy to verifiably prevent a nuclear-armed Iran while reinforcing public sentiment’s general disapproval of costly wars.  The president and our international partners deserve the cooperation of Congress to allow for the time needed to complete this historic deal.  Congress has every right to scrutinize the deal once all details have been announced on June 30and with this compromise bill it will have that opportunity.

Austin is executive director of the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans (PAAIA). Elsner is vice president for Communications at J Street.