麻豆影院

Audio Script

What鈥檚 the deal? CU-麻豆影院 political science expert on Iran nuclear agreement
CU-麻豆影院 Prof Sept. 4, 2015听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 Ken Bickers
Just when it was looking bleak for President Obama to get enough Senate Democrat support for the Iran nuclear agreement four senators threw their support behind the pact this week giving the president 37 - more than enough votes to sustain a threatened veto of any congressional vote of disapproval. Surprised by the sudden surge of support? Not CU-麻豆影院 political science Professor Ken Bickers.
CUT 1 鈥淚 was not surprised. All it required was that he not have defections of more than 25 percent of the Democrats in the Senate. Given the polarization in Washington these days the degree to which everything becomes partisan, the idea that the president would lose more than 25 percent of the Democrats it struck me as implausible. (:19) I assumed, and continue to assume, that he will have well over 75 percent of the Democrats on his side.鈥� (:26)
Bickers says this is a major victory for the president, who has always wanted a significant foreign policy agreement based on diplomacy and not threats of war.
CUT 2 鈥淚 think this is an important victory for the president. What鈥檚 important I think for the president is to have a pretty significant foreign policy victory. And he started off when he was running for president the first time extolling the virtues of diplomacy. (:13) So I think this will be one of those agreements that he will be most remembered for after his presidency.鈥� (:21)
What Bickers finds interesting is how Congress and the president are dealing with this 鈥渢reaty that鈥檚 not really a treaty鈥� issue.
CUT 3 鈥淚t is a bit unorthodox the way this is being dealt with by Congress and by the president. This has all the hallmarks of a treaty. It looks like a treaty, it鈥檚 going to act like a treaty and they have engineered an alternative kind of legislative strategy for this - which is that Congress has the opportunity to disapprove of it, but it鈥檚 a disapproval that can be vetoed.鈥� (:22)
What鈥檚 even stranger, says Bickers, is because it鈥檚 not a treaty the agreement can be scuttled fairly easily by the next president. But, he says, that鈥檚 only going to happen if a Republican wins the White House.
CUT 4 鈥淣ot until there is a new president who鈥檚 a Republican. Because of the unorthodox way this is being put into law, a new president would have a lot of options for how to change this. (:10) This agreement could be submitted by the subsequent president as a treaty for ratification by the Senate and that requires two-thirds of an affirmative vote, not one-third to prevent a presidential veto from being overwritten. So the simple thing with a Republican president would be to submit this as a treaty.鈥� (:29)
But nullifying the agreement won鈥檛 be that simple, says Bickers. Other countries are involved and he says it appears sanctions against Iran are already falling by the wayside even before the agreement has been signed. Dissolving the agreement would most likely isolate the U.S. and leave it with little leverage to pressure Iran alone.
CUT 5 鈥淭he Iranians have already gone to Russia to start talking about arms purchases, which under this agreement apparently aren鈥檛 supposed to begin for another several years. But the sanction regime is being dismantled already. (:13) In a subsequent administration if there were an effort to undo this it would require American leadership to rebuild a sanctions regime and presumably that would require some empirical evidence that the Iranians are not, in fact, abiding by the agreement.鈥� (:29)
Deal supporters are now trying to muster the 41 votes needed to block a disapproval resolution in the Senate and keep the president from having to use his veto power. Seven Democrats are undecided. The Senate must vote on the resolution by Sept. 17.
-CU-