How we got here

On July 14 the President negotiated a deal with Iran and several members of the United Nations to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The United States offered to reduce sanctions so long as Iran allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, to monitor the country’s nuclear development programs.

The deal caused a partisan rift. Most Democrats find it to be a fair compromise to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, while Republicans feel it yields too much. In a press release Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) argued that Iran would still be a nuclear threat and that reducing sanctions would cause money to flow to organizations such as Hamas and the Assad regime in Syria.

Congressional Review

The deal went to Congress for review, due to an unusual 60-day “congressional review period” that Congress and the President agreed to beforehand in a law enacted on May 22. That law gave Congress three options:

Enact a joint resolution approving the deal. Enact a joint resolution to block the deal. Do nothing, in which case the deal goes into effect.

A joint resolution must be passed by the House and Senate and goes to the President for a signature, which means the House and Senate need veto-proof majorities to block the deal. The White House announced that the President would veto any legislation to prevent the deal.

The review period began on July 19 — although that’s now in dispute — and by our count would end tomorrow.

A resolution to approve the deal

A bill to approve the deal, H.R. 3461, did not go far — as expected. With most House Democrats supporting and all House Republicans opposing, the bill failed in a House vote of 162–269 on Sept. 11. (We don’t know why this was a regular bill and not a joint resolution, but everyone knew it would fail anyway.)

There was no vote in the Senate on a bill to approve the deal. Instead the Senate took up a resolution to block it.

A resolution to block the deal

In the Senate, an attempt to pass a joint resolution of disapproval was filibustered by Senate Democrats — twice.

In the first vote last Thursday, Democrats filibustered the resolution by preventing the Republicans from getting the 60 votes they need to move the resolution forward.

Democratic Senators Cardin, Schumer, Menéndez, and Manchin voted alongside Republicans to reject the deal.

Then yesterday the Republicans called for a second vote, which had almost exactly the same outcome.

Unless Republicans can change the minds of two Democrats quickly (and more if they want a veto-proof majority), the congressional review period will expire and the President will have the authority to implement the deal (but see below).

The Senate votes were on an amendment to H.J.Res. 61, which while listed as a bill about health care coverage of veterans is being used instead as the vehicle for passage of the resolution to block the deal.

While the House waits for the Senate to pass the resolution and send it to the House, the House separately passed H.R. 3460, which would prevent the sitting President from altering sanctions based on any nuclear deal with Iran, by a vote of 247–186. The limitation would expire at the start of the next presidency.

Did the congressional review period ever begin?

Seeing that they had less support than they thought they did, Republicans are turning to a different tactic to block the deal —by saying the congressional review period has not yet even begun.

According to the law enacted by Congress and the President, the President must have provided Congress with the “side agreements” in the deal. But confidential side agreements between the IAEA and Iran were not provided to Congress.

The House passed a resolution, H.Res. 411, finding that the President had not followed the procedure laid out in May.

The vote on the resolution was entirely partisan. Not a single Republican voted against, and not a single Democrat voted for.

Since the House has not received the complete deal the congressional review period has not yet begun, the House has found, and so the deal would not automatically be approved in the coming days.

There’s an interesting legal analysis of this position by Jack Goldsmith.

The Senate has not yet addressed this issue, and it is unlikely that the President will agree with the House’s interpretation of the law. It is not clear whether the House will push this point further.