Republican presidential candidates have slammed President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, with some vowing to repudiate it if they win.
But the agreement will be implemented long before they take office, so reversing its effects would be a much harder task. And a new GOP president also would have to contend with the U.N. Security Council’s endorsement of the deal, giving it international legitimacy.
Polls show the deal is widely unpopular among Republicans, and most independent voters also oppose it. That makes it a good issue for GOP hopefuls to run on, and several have grabbed the opportunity.
“The first thing that I will do is tear up that agreement with Iran,” former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said during Thursday’s lower-tier GOP debate.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio also have vowed to repudiate the deal, which gives Iran’s theocratic Shiite Muslim regime international legitimacy and relief from sanctions in exchange for agreeing to put its nuclear program on ice for 10 years and promising never to build a nuclear weapon.
The Obama administration’s negotiating strategy opened the door for such a move, with the deal being structured as an executive agreement that uses the president’s authority under U.S. law to waive sanctions enacted by Congress, bypassing lawmakers. By keeping the authority to make the agreement in the White House, Obama has ensured the next occupant will have the authority to repudiate it.
But reversing its effects would be much harder. Indeed, administration officials are betting it would be impossible.
If the United States walks away from the deal “we will be left alone. That would be the worst of all worlds,” Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, the administration’s chief nuclear negotiator told the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on Wednesday, noting that other countries would not follow any attempt by Washington to change the agreement.
By the time the next president takes office, most international sanctions against Iran will have been lifted, Iranian banks will be re-integrated into the global financial system, and Tehran would have in hand an international agreement legitimizing its nuclear program as long as it adheres to the limits it sets.
The deal “effectively dismantles the U.S. and international economic sanctions architecture, which was designed to address the full range of Iran’s illicit activities,” sanctions expert Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told the Senate Banking panel.
He and other experts say it wouldn’t be easy to put those restrictions back in place in the face of opposition from other countries. Meanwhile, Iran would be able to unfreeze its nuclear program and resume enriching uranium without limits, a key element in concerns that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.
Indeed, the deal signed July 14 in Vienna notes that “Iran has stated that it will treat such a re-introduction or re-imposition of the sanctions specified in Annex II, or such an imposition of new nuclear-related sanctions, as grounds to cease performing its commitments under this [agreement] in whole or in part.”
Iranian officials already have indicated that all bets will be off if they believe the United States walks away or reneges on the deal. In a letter last month to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, Iranian officials complained that comments by White House spokesman Josh Earnest on July 17 about how the agency’s inspections would enhance U.S. and Israeli abilities to use military force were a violation of the deal.
“One of the biggest issues that bothers me is what we’re in essence going to be doing with Iran, is we know the momentum shifts in nine months, or the leverage shifts. All of the sanctions relief will take place between now and next March or April,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said at a hearing of his committee on Wednesday, summing up the challenge the next president will have to face.
