The House must stop President Obama from implementing the Iranian-Nuke Pact.
It is assumed the reader has been convinced that Obama again unnecessarily capitulated to an adversary, that Iran has already violated the pact, that Iran falsely accuses America for having violated the pact, that Iran is pushing-boundaries militarily, and that the POTUS remains resolutely inert.
Therefore, it is mandatory to confront the “who, what, where, when, why and how” of this challenge, now that key ambiguities has been clarified.
WHO has been the leader of the effort to unearth the true nature of this impending catastrophe?
Rep. Michael Richard Pompeo [pron. “Pomp’-eh-ah”], who has sent a letter to Secretary of State John -Kerry in response to the letter from the SoS that he had solicited earlier. On November 19, 2015, the Iranian-Nuke Pact was declared to be a “political commitment,” rather than a “treaty” or an “executive agreement.”
WHAT is a “political commitment”?
It is an “understanding” between the United States and a foreign entity, the constitutionality of which has gone mostly unexamined among academics, government officials and the courts.
WHERE has a “political commitment” been recognized?
Congressman Pompeo claims it carries no more weight than a scrap of paper, consistent with the conventional wisdom that perceives it as irrelevant domestically because it lacks gravitas as international “law.”
WHEN would this “political commitment” be implemented?
If unchecked, Obama will implement this ethereal concept any day now.
WHY would Obama be able to implement a document that no one has yet to sign?
This consistently-lawless POTUS would again ignore the other two branches of government.
HOW would Obama sidestep both Supreme Court precedent and Constitutional mandates?
Alan Morton Dershowitz, Esquire cited Gibbons v. Ogden to support the determination that this document is a treaty (because it is a long-term diplomatic covenant) rather than an executive agreement (because it is not a short-term commercial deal), explaining why it should have been ratified by the Senate, regardless of the Corker-Cardin statute.
Therefore, a model filing was drafted, drawing from fifteen heavily-hyperlinked essays initiated in May, culminating on September 29, summarized on October 2, and recapitulated in November (page 6);.
Key facets of this fill-in-the blanks litigation were fleshed-out on December 1 legalistically and on December 4 politically.
Here is the cascade of reasons why the House, plus the Senate, must block the pact:
- It has not been signed by anyone—including an Iranian—so it is unenforceable.
- It is a treaty rather than an executive(-legislative) agreement or a political commitment.
- It undermines American support for Israel’s right to exist and survival, ignoring the unambiguous “sense” of Congress, as articulated in Corker-Cardin.
- It was improperly implemented through passage of the Corker-Cardin Bill due to fundamental misrepresentations and withheld data.
- It violates the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- Neither the pact nor Corker-Cardin contains a “severability” clause and, thus, if any component of either document is flawed, the entire pact cannot be portrayed as having been approved.
The gravamen of the Administration’s legal argument can be portrayed in its most favorable light thusly: “[W]e identify limited circumstances in which Congress must approve a political commitment; i.e., when the text exhibits the highest degrees of formality, substance, and organization, or where the autonomy from U.S. legal obligations is so low as to raise questions about end-runs around the treaty-making power. Perhaps most importantly, bringing the political commitment power within a constitutional space reconciles existing practice with the Constitution’s basic ‘rule-of-law’ principle, establishing that the Constitution governs all U.S. international agreements, not just some of them.”
The pact does not comport with these specifics, for it is super-technical and America’s existing legal obligations—for example, through membership in the International Atomic Energy Agency—diminish claims of autonomy.
That’s why the pact constitutes a treaty that must be securely placed under the umbrella of the Constitution, and handled accordingly by both congress and the judiciary.
This is particularly urgent because, as anticipated, the whitewashed IAEA-report—which proves Iran lied about its nuclear program—was approved.
As a result, Andrew C. McCarthy has chronicled efforts by Sen. Ted Cruz—detailed in a letter he wrote to Sen. McConnell—that concluded the pact could be derailed by targeting bankers.
Such congressional initiatives to impede the deal are admirable, but even the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps Terrorist Designation Act (S.2094) introduced by Senator Ted Cruz—intended to maintain constraints on foreign subsidiaries of domestic corporations—fails to undermine the entire pact.
So too are attempts to tie-up monies to benefit victims of Iranian terrorism—such as that by Congressman Patrick Leo Meehan—and efforts to empower states to maintain sanctions.
Because this deal is interwoven with Obama’s Islamophilic foreign policy, undermining his unholy alliance with Iran and Russia could finally unravel what has proven to be a series of failed “friendship” gambits.
Let’s place Obama’s failed “following from behind” doctrine into receivership:
- Rep. Mike Pompeo extracted revelatory and damning letters from the State Department.
- Rep. Peter James Roskam successfully sponsored the resolution declaring Corker-Cardin to be null-and-void; former-Speaker Boehner recognized this laid the foundation for litigation.
- Rep. Louis Buller Gohmert introduced a resolution declaring that Obama’s default renders the Corker-Cardin review process moot and that this pact should be treated as a treaty; thus, a vehicle for empowering the House to sue can be “driven” to the floor for a prompt vote.
Just as the House was granted standing to sue Obama for faulty implementation of ObamaCare, it must now stop him from granting Iran both the funding for international terrorism and a pathway to the Bomb.
Robert B. Sklaroff, M.D. is a political-activist and has been a Republican Committee-Person for more than two decades; he has litigated against implementation of the Master Settlement Agreement with the tobacco industry due to flawed oversight, against the creation of health-insurer Highmark because it created a monopoly and monopsony, and against unconstitutional levels of public funding for two sports stadiums in Philadelphia.