A GOP President Won’t Stop the Iran Deal

John Tabin

A number of Republican candidates and office holders say they can sink the nuke deal with Iran. In reality, they probably can’t.

No matter how what happens with the 2016 elections, the chances of the GOP blowing up the nuclear deal with Iran are extraordinarily slim.

First off, it’s not a treaty, so it doesn't need the approval of two thirds of the Republican-controlled Senate. For a while earlier this year, the Obama administration seemed to think they could cut Congress out of the process entirely, presumably using the executive waiver powers built into most of the relevant sanctions legislation; Obama initially threatened to veto Senator Bob Corker's bill to give Congress a vote on the deal.

The veto threat was withdrawn, and Corker's bill passed both houses of Congress with near-unanimous support (only the very hawkish Republican Tom Cotton voted no), because the process it establishes is heavily weighted toward approving the deal. If Congress does nothing (or if action gets bottled up in committee), the deal is approved by default. If a resolution of approval fails, it's a symbolic rebuke with no legal force. And if a resolution of disapproval passes, it needs veto-proof support to actually block US participation in the deal.

That means the president would need to lose 13 Democrats in the Senate and 45 Democrats in the House (more if there are Republican defections in the other direction). That will, at the very least, be difficult.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/17/a-gop-president-won-t-stop-the-iran-deal.html