The par­ties to the Iran nuclear agree­ment don’t agree on what they agreed to.  Con­gress is strug­gling to agree on how to express its dis­agree­ment with the agreement.

Such is the debased state into which U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy and con­sti­tu­tion­al gov­er­nance have descended.

What Iran and the P5+1 – the five per­ma­nent mem­bers of the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil plus Ger­many – agreed to depends on whom you ask.  The par­ties claim to have an accord on the “key para­me­ters of a Joint Com­pre­hen­sive Plan of Action.”  The com­pre­hen­sive plan itself is a mat­ter of ongo­ing nego­ti­a­tion, which mem­bers hope to con­clude by the end of June; its “key para­me­ters” are in dispute.

The joint state­ment signed by Iran and the P5+1 was con­cise and to the point.  Iran will con­tin­ue to enrich ura­ni­um but only at a sin­gle facil­i­ty. Tehran will grant the Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency (IAEA) “announced access through agreed pro­ce­dures includ­ing to clar­i­fy past and present issues.”  Trans­la­tion: Iran will per­mit the IAEA to ver­i­fy that it isn’t devel­op­ing nuclear weapons, so long as the inspec­tions are sched­uled in advance and con­duct­ed accord­ing to ground rules accept­able to Iran.

In exchange for those inspec­tions, the E.U. will “ter­mi­nate the imple­men­ta­tion of all nuclear-relat­ed eco­nom­ic and finan­cial sanc­tions and the Unit­ed States will cease the appli­ca­tion of all nuclear-relat­ed sec­ondary eco­nom­ic and finan­cial sanc­tions simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the IAEA-ver­i­fied imple­men­ta­tion by Iran of its key nuclear commitments.”

The state­ment is delight­ful­ly vague on how quick­ly the “com­pre­hen­sive lift­ing of all sanc­tions” will take place.

The U.S. descrip­tion of the agree­ment is far longer and lists with great speci­fici­ty the com­mit­ments it says Iran made with respect to its enrich­ment activ­i­ties, a list Tehran dis­putes.  The State Depart­ment doc­u­ment insists that sanc­tions will be lift­ed in stages, not imme­di­ate­ly. Their “archi­tec­ture,” the state­ment says, will remain in place “for much of the dura­tion of the deal.”  U.S. and E.U. sanc­tions “will be sus­pend­ed after the IAEA has ver­i­fied that Iran has tak­en all of its key nuclear-relat­ed steps” [empha­sis added].  Sanc­tions will “snap back,” accord­ing to the doc­u­ment, “if at any time Iran fails to ful­fill its commitments.”

Tehran’s descrip­tion of the pre­lim­i­nary agree­ment rejects the notion that sanc­tions will remain in place “for much of the dura­tion of the deal.”  Instead, it says that once the com­pre­hen­sive plan is in place, “all of the mul­ti­lat­er­al eco­nom­ic and finan­cial sanc­tions by the E.U. and the uni­lat­er­al ones by the U.S. will be annulled.”

The dis­pute over how quick­ly sanc­tions will be removed intro­duces con­sid­er­able con­fu­sion over just what the par­ties have agreed to.  The Pres­i­dent, as my friend Marc Thiessen not­ed recent­ly in his Wash­ing­ton Post op-ed, has begun to crab-walk away from his pre­vi­ous asser­tions that sanc­tions would be lift­ed grad­u­al­ly, rather than immediately.

Asked by a reporter to be “defin­i­tive” about whether sanc­tions would grad­u­al­ly phase out or be imme­di­ate­ly sus­pend­ed, the Pres­i­dent gave a ram­bling answer that was any­thing but defin­i­tive.  “How sanc­tions are less­ened, how we snap back sanc­tions if there’s a vio­la­tion,” he said, “there are a lot of dif­fer­ent mech­a­nisms and ways to do that.”

The impor­tant thing, the Pres­i­dent argued, was not how quick­ly sanc­tions are removed but how eas­i­ly they can be restored.  “Our main con­cern here is mak­ing sure that if Iran doesn’t abide by its agree­ment that we don’t have to jump through a whole bunch of hoops in order to rein­state sanctions.”

The Pres­i­dent thus may be warm­ing to Tehran’s demand that sanc­tions end imme­di­ate­ly, rather than in stages, so long as they can “snap back.”  That “snap-back” lan­guage, how­ev­er, appears nei­ther in the joint state­ment nor in the Iran­ian state­ment.  The U.S. is appar­ent­ly alone in insist­ing it is part of the agreement.

More­over, sanc­tions aren’t elas­tic, snap­ping back instant­ly to their orig­i­nal shape.  As the Pres­i­dent him­self not­ed, the U.S. “painstak­ing­ly built an inter­na­tion­al coali­tion” to sup­port sanc­tions.  Reassem­bling such a coali­tion will take time and great diplo­mat­ic effort were Iran to go rogue.

But though the President’s under­stand­ing of the agree­ment con­tin­ues to evolve, he has been res­olute on this: he will act with­out seek­ing Con­gres­sion­al approval.  Once a “Joint Com­pre­hen­sive Plan of Action” is agreed to, the Pres­i­dent does not intend to send it down the street to Con­gress, but to New York, where the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil will rat­i­fy it and repeal a series of exist­ing res­o­lu­tions con­demn­ing Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.

Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee Chair­man Bob Cork­er (R‑TN) would very much like for Con­gress to reassert its con­sti­tu­tion­al role with respect to inter­na­tion­al agree­ments. There’s just one rub: his bill to require the Pres­i­dent to get Con­gres­sion­al approval would be vetoed and he doesn’t have the 67 votes need­ed to over­ride that veto.

So Cork­er has tak­en a dif­fer­ent tack, one that would estab­lish a pro­ce­dure for Con­gress to pass a res­o­lu­tion dis­ap­prov­ing the agree­ment, if a major­i­ty of mem­bers were to find it unac­cept­able. The Pres­i­dent has said that he would sign the revised Cork­er bill, but would veto any sub­se­quent­ly adopt­ed res­o­lu­tion of dis­ap­proval.  That would put Con­gress right back where it start­ed, pow­er­less to stop the Pres­i­dent from imple­ment­ing a deal that most mem­bers believe is detri­men­tal to the nation­al interest.

The Sen­ate is debat­ing the revised Cork­er bill this week.  Some con­ser­v­a­tives, includ­ing Mr. Thiessen, oppose it.  Con­gress should, they argue, pass the orig­i­nal Cork­er bill, which would require the Pres­i­dent to obtain Con­gres­sion­al approval of his pact with Iran.  The leg­is­la­tion would be vetoed, of course, but at least Con­gress will have gone down fight­ing for its con­sti­tu­tion­al prerogatives.

The choice between the orig­i­nal Cork­er bill and the revised mea­sure is a close one.  Under either, Con­gress would remain a help­less bystander.  On bal­ance, my sense is that Con­gress should pass the revised Cork­er bill and then, if the com­pre­hen­sive deal with Iran proves as flawed as expect­ed, adopt a res­o­lu­tion dis­ap­prov­ing it.

The President’s veto of that res­o­lu­tion will make clear that he stands alone in accom­mo­dat­ing the aya­tol­lahs.  This will send an unmis­tak­able sig­nal to Tehran and the world that this agree­ment is entire­ly the work of a lame duck Pres­i­dent just 18 months removed from pri­vate life.  A new Pres­i­dent would not be bound by U.S. law to abide by the agreement.

That might seem an emp­ty ges­ture, but Con­gress has increas­ing­ly been reduced to emp­ty ges­tures.  Part of its impo­tence in for­eign affairs is its own doing.  Con­gres­sion­al lead­ers have refused to take up a res­o­lu­tion autho­riz­ing our ill-con­ceived war in Syr­ia and Iraq.  The Pres­i­dent, to his cred­it, sub­mit­ted a draft res­o­lu­tion to Con­gress.  Democ­rats com­plained that it was too sweep­ing; Repub­li­cans that it was too lim­it­ing.  They mutu­al­ly agreed to let it die, ced­ing to the Pres­i­dent the author­i­ty to make war with­out Con­gres­sion­al authorization.

But while Con­gress has often fool­ish­ly relin­quished its own pow­er, its decline is not entire­ly its fault. Con­gress has evolved into the least pow­er­ful branch, the oppo­site of what the framers intend­ed, in part because it gen­er­al­ly can­not act uni­lat­er­al­ly.  The oth­er two branch­es can.  And often do.

Courts in recent decades have assert­ed super-leg­isla­tive author­i­ty.  They are expect­ed to do so again this sum­mer, declar­ing that states must accept the valid­i­ty of same-sex mar­riages.  In so doing, they will con­tra­vene leg­is­la­tion adopt­ed by Con­gress and signed by the Pres­i­dent, as well as acts of state leg­is­la­tures, ref­er­en­da and pro­vi­sions of state con­sti­tu­tions.  We have come to accept the legit­i­ma­cy of such judi­cial law­mak­ing, which requires nei­ther pres­i­den­tial sig­na­ture nor Con­gres­sion­al ratification.

The exec­u­tive branch has sim­i­lar­ly enlarged its sphere of unchecked pow­er.  Con­ser­v­a­tives still can’t come to terms with the fact that the Pres­i­dent will veto Con­gres­sion­al attempts to repeal Oba­macare or over­turn his immi­gra­tion poli­cies.  They argue that Con­gress was elect­ed to “stop Oba­ma,” some­thing the Con­sti­tu­tion does not empow­er Con­gress to do.

Even the legislature’s much her­ald­ed “pow­er of the purse” is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble to exer­cise absent exec­u­tive coop­er­a­tion.  The Con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides that Trea­sury can’t spend mon­ey unless it is appro­pri­at­ed “by law.”  But to become law, an appro­pri­a­tions bill requires either the President’s sig­na­ture or a 2/3 vote in the House and Sen­ate to over­ride his veto.

Con­gres­sion­al pow­er, in short, is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly cir­cum­scribed.  The pow­er of the oth­er two branch­es relies to a great extent on self-restraint.  There is lit­tle Con­gress can do – short of impeach­ment or propos­ing that states rat­i­fy a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment – to block a Pres­i­dent or a Court bent on expand­ing its own power.

If the Repub­lic were func­tion­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly, Con­gress would serve as an effec­tive check on the President’s pow­er to con­clude agree­ments with for­eign gov­ern­ments. Con­sti­tu­tion­al gov­er­nance, sad­ly, remains in a bit of a slump.  In the cir­cum­stances, the best Con­gress can do is to pass the new Cork­er bill and reg­is­ter its dis­ap­proval of a mis­guid­ed agree­ment with a malig­nant regime.