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Republican Party

Iran legislation a productive change of pace: Our view

Rather than rant or disrupt, GOP senator worked quietly for months on a compromise.

The Editorial Board
USA Today
In front of a demonstrator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., left, and Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md.,  discuss the Iran legislation Tuesday.

In the weeks before President Obama announced that negotiators had agreed on a framework for curtailing Iran's nuclear program, Congress hardly covered itself with glory — or even acted responsibly.

From House Speaker John Boehner's brazenly political stunt (inviting a foreign leader to undercut U.S. foreign policy from the House floor) to Sen. Tom Cotton's strikingly irresponsible letter (warning Iran that a future president might not honor any deal Obama signs), Republicans have acted in a manner that they would declare unpatriotic in other circumstances.

In that context, the compromise patiently worked out this week by Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., to give Congress a voice in any prospective deal with Iran is a productive change of pace.

Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is every bit as skeptical of the Iran negotiations as his more bellicose colleagues. But rather than rant or disrupt, he worked quietly for months to get his way. By last week, he had built a veto-proof majority for legislation that would force Obama — over the president's vehement objections — to submit any deal to Congress for approval.

On Tuesday, Obama reluctantly yielded to the inevitable, and the Senate and House are expected to approve Corker's compromise next week. If an Iran deal is completed — still no sure thing — Congress would get 30 days to block it, followed by 12 days for Obama to veto, then 10 additional days for Congress to override that veto.

Those are shorter time frames than Corker originally proposed, and along with other concessions that weeded out deal-killing provisions, they were enough to draw key Democrats into Corker's artfully constructed coalition.

The legislation doesn't pretend to resolve the contentious debate over Iran. How could it? The stakes are historic, and critical details won't even be known until a June 30 deadline for completing negotiations is reached. But it does the next best thing: It brings order to the process and, with it, at least a sliver of hope for national unity when that process is done.

Regardless of where one stands on the Iran negotiations, this should be seen as a good thing, affording time and structure for a decision guaranteed to have far-reaching consequences.

In the optimistic view put forth by Obama, a good deal would usher in limitations on Iran's program, backed by inspections that would credibly push back Iran's "breakout time" for producing a weapon to a year, vs. weeks or months now. Tensions would ease as Iran complied and sanctions fell away, strengthening moderates, drawing Iran into the community of nations, and reducing the likelihood of war — either to attack the Iranian program or to defend against Iran's aggression in the region.

But that scenario draws plenty of skepticism — most eloquently expressed last week in a Wall Street Journal column by former secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz.

They argue that reliable inspections might be unattainable and that reimposing international sanctions once they are removed might be impossible. More broadly, the ex-secretaries believe that Iran — revolutionary, theocratic and flush with money from the easing of sanctions — would escalate its aggression, not retreat from it, potentially setting off a nuclear arms race in the world's most dangerous region.

It is a fateful choice that should require ample debate and, eventually, a certain degree of national consensus.

By that measure, Corker's requirement that the president get the backing of at least one-third of one chamber of Congress (the minimum to sustain a veto) does not seem like a very high bar — and the senator's old-school approach to legislating is something that others would be wise to emulate.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.

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