Obama stiff-arms his legacy by dismissing Congress on Iran

And that refusal is why Obama may fail to achieve what he called a “historic opportunity” in his Sept. 24 speech to the U.N. General Assembly.

“It is incorrect when it says that Congress can actually modify the terms of an agreement at any time. That is flat wrong,” Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, referring to an open letter to Iran’s leaders signed by 47 Republican senators. “They do not have the right to modify an agreement reached, executive to executive, between leaders of the countries.”

Kerry also repeated what he had previously told lawmakers, that the administration would not submit the deal to Congress for approval because it would not be legally binding.

“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,” he said.”We don’t even have diplomatic relations with Iran right now.”

Obama’s administration has been stiff-arming Congress from the beginning of the process — a November 2013 interim agreement that was only supposed to last six months — to current talks on a permanent deal 16 months later. The president has put lawmakers in a Catch-22: He refuses to shape the U.S. negotiating strategy to meet their concerns and insists they can’t modify a deal once signed.

The administration plans to use national security waivers and executive orders to bypass congressional opposition to give Iran the relief from U.S. sanctions it demands as a condition of a deal, even though those sanctions were enacted into law — some over Obama’s veto.

It is a tactic Obama has used successfully, most recently on immigration, where congressional Republicans failed to overcome Democratic opposition to withholding Homeland Security Department funding as a protest over executive orders they consider an illegal abuse of the president’s authority.

But this time congressional Democrats aren’t playing along with an administration that seems to keep changing its story and making new concessions. This time, the loyalty theWhite Houseexpects from Democrats is at odds with the clear skepticism of the voters Democrats will have to face.

Though Democrats are clearly angry about what they see as partisan moves by congressional Republicans on the issue, most recently Monday’s letter to Iran, they have not withdrawn support for bipartisan legislation to require congressional approval and tie Obama’s ability to waive sanctions to that process. Intense lobbying from the White House, including personal pressure from Obama, has not stemmed a continued increase in Democratic support for the move.

Five Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors to the Senate bill. The latest, Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, joined Tuesday amid the controversy over the letter.

Another Senate bill, to toughen sanctions against Iran if a permanent deal is not reached before the current round of talks end June 30, has 51 co-sponsors, a majority of the chamber. Obama has threatened to veto both bills.

Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., co-author of the bipartisan legislation with Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said Tuesday he expects to have no trouble getting a veto-proof majority, because lawmakers recognize the talks are likely to fail.

“It’s now likely that Iran is going to stiff the president,” he said. “I think the Iranians are absolutely determined to finish their nuclear arsenal.”

Democratic support for both bills is partly driven by the fact that Americans are skeptical of a potential deal, since they have to face voters in 2016 and Obama doesn’t.

Seventy-one percent of respondents in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Monday said the talks would not make a major difference in Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, a figure that includes 58 percent of Democrats and 72 percent of independents.

But lawmakers also are concerned about what they see as an escalating series of U.S. concessions to keep the talks going and administration efforts to downplay evidence of problems with Iran’s ability to be trusted.

For example, after the November 2013 interim deal was signed, U.S. officials, including Kerry, quickly brushed aside Iran’s contention that it had the “right” to enrich uranium, in keeping with U.N. Security Council resolutions saying Tehran was not allowed to enrich at all. But Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 25 that “Iran has mastered the fuel cycle” and would be able to continue enriching uranium as part of a peaceful nuclear program.

Administration officials also insist the Iranians have kept the terms of the interim deal, in spite of reports of potential cheating.

In one case, the Institute for Science and International Security examined whether Iran had violated the interim agreement by feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into a research centrifuge at an enrichment facility at the Natanz nuclear site. The independent, nonpartisan organization concluded in a Dec. 16 final report that the move violated the spirit if not the letter of the interim deal.

The Iranians agreed to stop feeding the centrifuge as part of the November agreement to extend the interim deal for another seven months, widely seen as the latest example of Tehran bargaining away something Washington says it shouldn’t be doing in exchange for new concessions from international negotiators.

Lawmakers also are guarding what they see as their right as members of an equal branch of government. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., noted Wednesday that Kerry and Obama were co-sponsors of legislation in 2007 that would require congressional approval of a status-of-forces deal with Iraq that the administration of President George W. Bush was negotiating as an executive agreement, and that Kerry had said Congress would get a chance to weigh in on any deal.

“I’m very disappointed … that you’ve gone back on your statement that this agreement must pass muster with Congress,” Corker said.