Approval of Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

Floor Speech

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Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, when I came to this House in 1997, a few months after I started serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee, I said back then that the Iran nuclear program was the greatest single threat to the security of Americans. It was true then. It is true now.

On July 14, a few hours after the deal was published, I came to this floor and said that what this House ought to do is consider a Resolution of Approval of the nuclear deal and to vote it down by a large vote. That is exactly what we will do tomorrow morning.

Let me go through a number of points that proponents and opponents of this deal can both agree on. The first is this resolution is quite a bit different than the one we have been thinking about for the last month.

This is a Resolution of Approval. And even if we vote it down, the President can and will carry out this agreement.

That is very different from the Resolution of Disapproval that we have all talked about and made commitments about.

We don't have any commitments on this resolution. It is a totally new resolution. This resolution will express the feelings of Congress, but will not prevent the President from carrying out the deal.

Second, we can agree this deal is better during the next year and a half than it is the next decade. The controls on Iran's nuclear program are much stronger for the first 10 years than they are thereafter.

Whether you like the deal or hate the deal, you have got to agree that it is better up front than it is in the out-years.

The third thing we can agree on is that the President only promised Iran that he would sign the deal and that he would carry out the deal and that he would use his veto, as he has threatened to do and has successfully done, in effect--that he would carry out the deal using his powers to do so. That is already settled.

Mr. Speaker, the President never told Iran that Congress would approve this deal. Why should we give Iran more than they bargained for? They bargained for the President's signature together with his freedom to carry out the deal. That is already settled. Why should we give Iran something extra in return for nothing?

We should not vote to approve this deal.

The next thing we can all agree on is that this deal is not a binding agreement as a matter of U.S. Constitutional law or international law.

The Constitution defines a treaty. This is not a treaty and certainly wouldn't get a two-thirds vote confirmation in the Senate.

If you look at the Vienna Convention on the law of treaties, this is not a ratified treaty, it is not an unratified treaty, it is not a legislative executive agreement. It is simply an agreement between the executives of the respective governments.

Mr. Speaker, the next thing we can agree on is that we don't know what the best policy for America is in the next decade. Let's keep our options open. Iran is not legally bound by this agreement. Even if they were, they would conveniently ignore that any day of the week.

We cannot feel that we are legally bound. Now, as a legal matter, we are not. But appearances matter. And if this agreement that has been signed by the President gets a positive vote of approval in this House, there will be those around the world who believe that it is binding on the United States, even while, as a legal matter, it is not binding on Iran and, oh, by the way, their legislature hasn't voted to approve it.

So we need freedom of action. What form will that action take? Will we demand that Iran continue to limit its nuclear program beyond year 10, beyond year 15?

After all, we are continuing the sanctions relief all through the next decade. I don't know if that will be the right policy or not.

Mr. Speaker, the current President's hands are untied. He gets to carry out his policy for the remainder of the term. Vote no on this resolution. Because if we vote yes, we are tying the hands of future Presidents in a decade to come.

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