FiveThirthyEight:
President Trump has revealed his strategy on the Iran nuclear deal: Pressure Congress to take the heat for killing it or incur the blame for keeping it. Out of the gate, there is little sign that Capitol Hill is willing to play along. Trump’s strategy requires the support of at least some Democrats in the Senate (and key allies in Europe), and no one seems especially eager to lend it.
The president could have made good on his campaign threat to kill the deal by withdrawing from it outright. He could have also urged Congress to reimpose strict sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program — a move made possible by his decision on Friday to “decertify” the deal under U.S. law. New sanctions would have likely caused Tehran to say the U.S. was in material breach of the accord and pull out.
Instead, perhaps aware that he was unlikely to get Congress to pass such sanctions and unwilling to shoulder international criticism for being the side to violate the deal, the president on Friday called on lawmakers to amend a 2015 U.S. law allowing for congressional oversight of the nuclear deal; if they fail to do so, Trump threatened to “terminate” the deal entirely.
Iran’s position has always been that it will not allow the U.S. to force it into being the party that kills the deal. That appears to be Congress’ position now: Lawmakers are refusing to take upon themselves the president’s weighty diplomatic responsibilities.
The administration may not truly care if the amendment passes after all — its goal may simply be to establish leverage and a negotiating position, to buy time and the credibility of their threat to withdraw with allies and foes alike. Tillerson admitted, “We don’t want to suggest this is a slam dunk on the Hill. We know it’s not.”
Tillerson said that he hopes Congress will pass this amendment within 90 days, before the next deadline for the president to certify Iran’s adherence with the deal. It suggests another priority of the administration in pushing the new proposal is to save the president the legal responsibility and political headache of repeatedly verifying Iran’s compliance as U.S. law currently mandates.
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Well congress is too lazy to write this kind of stuff any way but may be AIPAC boys will help them drafting a new deal!
The AIPAC boys and the rest of the BiBi Maccabis are not into writing legislation. They want a bombing campaign which the Little-Hand Moron, Donnie Fiasco is afraid of doing. So we are looking at a period of Shol-kon-Seft-kon for now.