Classroom Iran Deal Primer: What's the Senate got to do with it?

By Jennifer N. Victor

[We've got a few more posts in our hopper before we officially move to Vox next week. This one is timely.]

While there is lots of excellent reporting and explaining of the Iran deal out there, in this post, I offer some political science explanation of what's happening in the Senate with the Iran proposal.

What is the deal?
In a nutshell, Iran agrees to give up 70 percent of its centrifuges (and those it keeps will not be state-of-the-art) and to give up 97 percent of its enriched uranium (and that which it keeps will be weapons or medical grade). Iran agrees to UN inspections to verify that it meets these requirements and if so, many sanctions will be lifted.

Why do we have a deal?

The United States and its allies have long sought a solution to the threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon. If Iran developed a nuclear weapon, the U.S., Europe, and Israel might be at risk of attack.  Evidence suggests Iran has been working toward developing such a weapon. Previous efforts at curtailing Iran’s development of nuclear weapons have focused on UN inspections and sanctions, with mixed results.

What is Congress’s role in the deal?

The U.S. constitution, and American historical precedence, gives the president wide latitude over foreign policy. As the chief executive, foreign policy is probably the public policy area where the president has the most power. While the Senate technically must approve treaties, most foreign policy is not enacted through treaties these days and power in the legislature (i.e., Congress) is too fragmented to effectively negotiate with foreign states and the executive branch has a great advantage in being consolidated in a unitary actor, the president.

Why doesn’t Congress have to approve the deal?

Traditionally, both the President and Congress have authority to impose and ease foreign sanctions; however, in this case, the short answer to the question is that Congress abdicated its sanction authority to the President. In 2010 Congress passed a law (The Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act), which the President signed, that authorized the president to lift sanctions on Iran only if the President removes Iran from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism and verifies that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons development program. This law gives the president, not congress, the authority to lift the sanctions if the President determines it is “in the national interest” to do so.  Similar laws were also passed in 2012.[1] Earlier this year the 114^th Congress pass the Iran Nuclear Agreement Act of 2015, which President Obama signed. The law requires the President to submit any nuclear deal with Iran to Congress for review and assessment, and limits the president’s ability to lift sanctions during the review period. We find ourselves in this period now.[2]

How can Congress stop the deal?
Congress can stop the deal by passing a joint resolution that condemns or nullifies the agreement.  A joint resolution is like a bill in that it is passed by majority vote of each chamber and goes to the president for signature.  If it overcomes these hurdles, it becomes law. Congress uses joint resolutions when it wants to make a law that doesn’t amend the U.S. Code, such a declaring war, or enacting a continuing resolution to keep government funded without appropriations.

Congress also has the option of passing a concurrent resolution, which does not go to the president for signature; however, such measures also do not have the force of law. They are primarily symbolic.

How could the Obama Administration stop Congress from stopping the deal?

There are two basic scenarios that could play out in Congress that would prevent Congress from stopping the Iran-deal.

Scenario 1:  Each chamber passes a joint resolution condemning or nullifying the deal. In this case, the president would veto the resolution, and congress would then need to override the veto to stop the bill. A veto override requires a 2/3 vote of each chamber.  If opponents of the deal do not have 2/3 support in the House and Senate, the bill remains vetoed and the Iran deal goes forward.

The following spatial diagram outlines a rough sketch of this scenario. Imagine a one-dimensional ideological space, where the far left is considered “Dovish” and the far right is considered “Hawkish.” These are not precise estimates and one could easily haggle over exact positioning. What’s important here are the relative positions of the elements. 

• Imagine that the current state of policy with Iran, the status quo, is somewhere in the middle.   
• The median of the Republican Party position on Iran policy is likely somewhere on the right, while the median position of the Democrats is somewhere on the left.  
• The deal that the Obama administration proposed can probably be considered somewhere to the left of the status quo because it eases sanctions and, by some analysts’ accounts, reduces the near-term threat of war. This is important because we can note that the Republicans prefer the status quo to the deal, which explains why they will all vote against it (rather, vote in favor of the resolution that would strip the deal). 
• The final point to consider is what we’ll call the “veto pivot.” If we lined up all 100 Senators in the chamber from left to right in terms of their ideal position on this hawk-dove spectrum, the veto pivot would be the senator with 1/3 of the Senators to her left, and 2/3 of the Senators to her right. This is because it requires a 2/3 vote of the Senate to override a presidential veto. Now, we only need to know whether the veto pivot prefers the status quo or the President’s deal.

The diagram shows in orange the range of policy proposals that the veto pivot prefers to the status quo; by that I mean, based only on the spatial (i.e., ideological) preferences of the senators, proposals in the orange region are closer to the veto pivot’s ideal point than the status quo. Since the President’s proposal falls inside this set of policies, this model suggests that the Senate will not be successful in overriding a presidential veto, because at least the veto pivot and the 33 senators to her left, prefer the president’s proposal to the status quo.

Scenario 2: When the Republican controlled Senate attempts to pass the joint resolution stopping the bill, the Democrats have the opportunity to filibuster the resolution. This would “save” President Obama from having to veto the bill. It appears this is a less likely, but not totally unrealistic outcome.

We can represent this scenario similarly to the one above, except instead of a veto pivot that shows the point where 1/3 of the senate is to the left, we would be interested in a filibuster pivot that shows the point where 2/5 of the senate is to the left. This is because a 3/5 majority (60 senators) is required to call a proposal to question, end debate, and take a vote; meaning, 2/5 (or the 40 senators to the left of the pivot, plus the pivot herself) can stop such a vote. When items up for vote on the Senate floor do not receive this 60-vote supermajority, these days we call it a filibuster (even though no actual filibuster has taken place). In our scenario, the filibuster pivot would be to the right of the veto pivot above, but it is difficult to know how far to the right. If the filibuster pivot is in fact on the other side of the status quo from the proposal, then the Democrats will not be able to successfully filibuster the resolution. If the filibuster pivot is to the left of the status quo, then the Democrats will be able to successfully filibuster the proposal. 

Given recent news that Senator Mikulski is likely to support the Iran deal, it seems likely that we are at least at Scenario 1 and that the Senate will be able to override a presidential veto of the deal-squashing congressional resolution. There are still a few weeks until these votes take place so we’ll have to wait and see if we get to Scenario #2.

 

*Update (9/8/2015) Reports this morning that more Democratic Senators have come out in support of the deal suggest that we will see a filibuster of the joint resolution to stop the deal. We therefore find ourselves in scenario 2 above, and can place a filibuster pivot to the left of the status quo in the figure.

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[1] National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012; Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012; Iran Freedom and Counter-proliferation Act of 2012

[2] Rennack, Dianne E. 2014. “Iran: US Economic Sanctions and the Authority to Lift Restrictions.” Congressional Research Service Report 7-5700, July 15, 2015.