The Missiles Being Fired at Israel Got a Boost from the Obama-Biden Iran Nuclear Deal, Which Congressional Republicans Failed to Block

As Iran rains missiles down on Israel, it is worth recalling, as Mark points out, that calculations and representations about Tehran’s ballistic-missile programs were central to the Obama-Biden administration’s sales job on its Iran nuclear deal — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It is worth recalling, then, why President Obama needed the JCPOA and what congressional Republicans, led by since-retired senator Bob Corker (then head of the Foreign Relations Committee), did to help him get it.

As I recounted here, to carry out his appeasement policy, Obama needed to nullify the sanctions on Iran. He could not do that unilaterally because of a 2010 statute known as CISADA — the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act — which empowered a president to cancel sanctions only if his administration could represent that Iran had ceased (a) being a state sponsor of terrorism and (b) its “pursuit, acquisition, and development of, and verifiably dismantled its, nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and ballistic missiles and ballistic missile launch technology” (emphasis added).

Even the Obama-Biden administration, for all its mendacity (including about how the JCPOA was supposedly in U.S. national interests) drew the line at such provably absurd claims. Administration officials conceded that Iran would keep supporting its terrorist forces (particularly Hezbollah, with which it continued parking over 150,000 missiles to point at Israel). And the major point of the JCPOA, from Tehran’s perspective, was to preserve and advance Iranian weapons programs — very much including ballistic-missile development.

Obama had power to waive sanctions, but he needed Congress’s help in order to cancel them, which is what Iran wanted.

Rather than blocking Obama to the extent they could, congressional Republicans enabled him through Corker’s crafting of legislation that reversed the Constitution’s presumption against international pacts.

The treaty clause prevents the approval of treaties absent supermajority approval — two-thirds — by the Senate. In effect, this means a treaty should be un-ratifiable unless the president firmly establishes that it is in America’s interests.

If Obama had submitted the JCPOA as a treaty, it never would have been approved. Under Corker’s scheme, however, Obama’s JCPOA would be deemed “not disapproved” unless Congress enacted a “resolution of disapproval.” As Republican leaders well knew, such an enactment was impossible because they lacked anything close to the number of votes they’d need to override an Obama veto of such a resolution (if they could even get a vote on such a resolution).

Republicans did not want to meaningfully challenge Obama on the JCPOA. In part, this was due to one of the then-president’s signature strawmen: We were supposedly confronted with a choice of either a nuclear deal, however “imperfect,” or all-out war with Iran. Needless to say, despite decades of hostile relations, we’d never had such a war — as opposed to the low-thrum terrorist war Iran has waged since 1979, and which the JCPOA assiduously avoided addressing — because Iran was, and is, in no position to challenge the U.S. armed forces in that way. But that was Obama’s story, and Republicans did not want to be seen as warmongers.

Because Obama’s strawman was patently specious, I’ve always believed Republicans were more moved by major donors, particularly Boeing, which stood to rake in billions from commerce with Iran if sanctions were lifted. (See here, here, and here.) Plenty of Republicans, moreover, are members of the delusional Beltway consensus that rapprochement with Iran is just around the corner if we could just empower the many “moderates” in the regime. (The regime’s response to these entreaties is always “Death to America.”)

Corker claimed his compromise legislation was necessary in order to force Obama to disclose the JCPOA. In the event, the Obama-Biden administration withheld key JCPOA provisions anyway.

To repeat yet again what I recently reiterated:

Another objection to the JCPOA was its heedlessness regarding Iran’s development of ballistic missiles. The Obama-Biden administration orchestrated the deal’s approval in conjunction with Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015), which, beginning eight years after the JCPOA’s 2015 effective date, ended restrictions on Iran’s ballistic-missile activity. That explicitly included canceling prohibitions on Iran’s development of “ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons.”

Hence, all restrictions on Iran’s missile activity ended in 2023. During the Obama-Harris administration, then, Iran has not only developed ballistic missiles but has transferred hundreds of them to Russia for its war of aggression against Ukraine — to say nothing of Tehran’s routine supplying of its terrorist proxies.

Obama and Biden designed the JCPOA, and congressional Republicans enabled them, knowing that Iran was ramping up ballistic-missile development and that the JCPOA would end the existing restrictions on its ballistic-missile activity. Iran has proceeded to arm Hezbollah, as well as its proxies in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, with those missiles.

And now, for the second time in six months, this time in barrages of greater force, Iran has joined its proxies in launching missiles at Israel.