The United States and its international partners are seeking a nuclear deal with Iran that is nonbinding under international law because that would make it easier to reimpose sanctions if Tehran violates it, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Thursday.
The nonbinding nature “provides us with that flexibility to snap back sanctions,” she told reporters.
Psaki repeatedly refused to confirm or deny that Obama administration officials chose to negotiate a nonbinding executive agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program rather than a treaty to evade the Constitution’s requirement for Senate ratification of treaties. Nor would she say whether any U.S. negotiating partner sought that approach.
“The reason is as I’ve already outlined it,” she said. “I have addressed the question.”
Secretary of State John Kerry caused a stir Wednesday when he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “we’ve been clear from the beginning we’re not negotiating a legally binding plan. We’re negotiating a plan that will have a capacity for enforcement.”
Kerry also told lawmakers that Congress would not have the right to modify the deal, since it would be an executive agreement — even though it would guarantee Iran relief from U.S. sanctions that were enacted into law, some over Obama’s veto.
President Obama’s decision to shut Congress out of a role in any potential agreement is sparking fierce pushback on Capitol Hill, even among Democrats, many of whom support legislation to require congressional approval of a deal.
The issue of sanctions is a particular point of friction. The bipartisan legislation by Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., would limit Obama’s ability to use his executive power to waive sanctions unless Congress approves the deal.
Obama has threatened to veto that bill and another bill by Menendez and Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., that would impose new sanctions if the talks fail to produce a final deal by July 1.
“There’s a long history and a long precedent for these types of government-to-government international agreements,” Psaki said, noting that many important U.S. security arrangements in the past have been executive agreements not binding under international law.
One of those precedents is the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, an executive agreement among the United States, Russia, Britain and Ukraine, in which Ukraine agreed to give up the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the former Soviet Union in exchange for guarantees of its territorial integrity.
Those guarantees were shredded a year ago when Russian troops seized the Crimea from Ukraine, and Russian-backed rebels continue to seize more territory from the control of the central government in Kiev, in spite of international sanctions.
Lawmakers from both parties in Congress, citing the U.S. commitment at Budapest, are pushing the administration to provide arms to Ukraine’s beleaguered armed forces, but the administration has not agreed to do so.
One of those lawmakers, Rep. Michael Turner repeated the request in a letter to Obama on Wednesday.
The letter notes that Germany’s ambassador in Washington, Peter Wittig, had told the Associated Press in an interview published Monday that Obama had privately agreed not to arm Ukraine at a White House meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“I am deeply troubled by the circumstances, terms and manner in which this agreement was reached,” the Ohio Republican wrote, noting that it was part of a pattern by the president of negotiating secret deals with foreign leaders behind the backs of lawmakers.
