Republicans will try to find their footing anew on national security this week, looking to try to overcome last week’s ill-received letter to Iran’s leaders and instead focus on President Obama’s negotiations, and on Congress’ role in approving whatever deal he strikes with Tehran.
Senate Republicans vehemently denied Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s claim that Congress won’t — and shouldn’t — have a role in a final agreement. A legal report last week said any lasting deal that includes the permanent lifting of sanctions will have to go through Congress.
The author of the letter, Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican, accused Mr. Obama of mishandling the letter by attacking Republicans rather than using it to drive a harder bargain with Iran. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, insisted that Congress will find a way to speak.
“We will either be voting on a bill that would require the deal to come to Congress — the president said he would veto that. Or if there is no deal, we’ll be voting on a bill that says the sanctions need to be ratcheted up,” Mr. McConnell told CNN’s “State of the Union” program as he and fellow Republicans tried to shift focus away from the letter and back toward the details of the deal Mr. Obama is negotiating.
The letter, signed by Mr. Cotton and 46 of his fellow Republicans, has proved to be a major headache for Republicans.
A week earlier, Congress heard from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who pleaded with lawmakers to take a firmer line in their negotiations and criticized the outlines of the deal he said Mr. Obama is negotiating.
The key questions in the deal are what kind of nuclear capabilities Iran will be allowed to keep and how long it would take for Iran to “break out,” or develop a nuclear bomb, if it abrogates the agreement.
Mr. Netanyahu said the deal under negotiation would leave Iran weeks or months away from a nuclear weapon, but the administration has signaled it would take longer.
The Israeli leader told Congress that Iran is negotiating from a position of weakness and needs a deal more than the U.S. does. He argued that Mr. Obama should hold out for better terms.
Mr. Kerry, speaking on the CBS program “Face the Nation,” said it’s too early for anyone to judge the deal. He said that applies to the Republicans who wrote the letter, too.
“It’s like giving people a grade on a test before the test is even written, let alone given,” Mr. Kerry said.
The letter, he said, was a calculated attempt by Republicans to undermine Mr. Obama’s negotiating stance.
He said Congress has played a role because Mr. Obama has kept them informed, with the administration providing 119 briefings this year alone, but seemed intent on preventing Capitol Hill from having a veto.
In their letter to Iran’s leaders, the 47 Senate Republicans warn that any deal Mr. Obama purports to be long-term and binding will have to be approved by Congress. It implies that Iran will need to make more concessions to appease Capitol Hill, which has taken a harder-line stance publicly than the administration has.
Mr. Cotton told CBS that he has no regrets about the letter and said Mr. Obama has misplayed it by using it as a political cudgel in the U.S. rather than as a negotiating point to extract a better deal from Iran.
“If the president and the secretary of state were intent on driving a hard bargain, they would be able to point to this letter and say, ’They’re right.’ As Secretary Kerry said on Wednesday in his Senate testimony, any lasting deal needs to be approved by Congress,” Mr. Cotton said.
The fallout from the letter is by no means over.
Liberal groups are pressuring Republicans who signed the letter to withdraw their names, and editorial boards in home-state papers have been brutal in assessing their senators who signed on.
“Stop embarrassing our country before the eyes of the world,” Progress Ohio, a liberal group, wrote in a fundraising email targeting Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican who is up for re-election next year.
In an interview with Vice News last week, Mr. Obama said he is “embarrassed” for the Republican senators.
“For them to address a letter to the ayatollah, who they claim is our mortal enemy, and their basic argument to them is, ’Don’t deal with our president because you can’t trust him to follow through on an agreement,’ that’s close to unprecedented,” the president said in an interview to be posted Monday.
Speaking at the Gridiron Club and Foundation’s annual dinner in Washington, where politicians traditionally tell jokes, Mr. Obama noted that he was criticized recently for appearing in a video to reach younger voters — then took a shot at Mr. Cotton.
“You don’t diminish your office by taking a ’selfie,’” Mr. Obama said. “You do it by sending a poorly written letter to Iran. Really, that wasn’t a joke.”
Still to be seen is whether the letter damaged the coalition Sen. Bob Corker, Tennessee Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, was trying to build with Democrats to demand that any deal undergo congressional scrutiny.
Even without a bill, Mr. Obama could have to submit an agreement to Congress if he wants it to include a fundamental change in the sanctions regime, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides legal analysis, among other functions, for Congress.
The Congressional Research Service said if Mr. Obama wants to create a legally binding deal with Iran, Capitol Hill will have to have a say. Short of that, any deal the president strikes could carry moral authority or momentum only to the next administration but wouldn’t bind the president who takes office in January 2017.
• Tom Howell Jr. and Dave Boyer contributed to this report.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.