Kerry calls in an airstrike on his own position

I have to say the reaction to Tom Cotton's letter has been so over the top that it's amusing. Here's a typically subtle example that I saw on the interwebs:

Those bastards!

So the Republicans have sandbagged what, exactly? Let John Kerry explain:

[Kerry] told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the letter undermined U.S. foreign policy and was legally incorrect.

"We've been clear from the beginning: We're not negotiating a, quote, legally binding plan," Kerry told the panel. "We're negotiating a plan that will have in it the capacity for enforcement. We don't even have diplomatic relations with Iran right now."

Emphasis mine. So if the agreement doesn't bind Iran to certain behaviors, what exactly is the point of all this? Back to Kerry:

Negotiators from the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia hope to seal a framework with Iran by month's end and a comprehensive agreement by July. Kerry scoffed at the notion that Obama's successor would discard a deal reached between so many powerful governments and adhered to by Iran.

"I'd like to see the next president, if all of those countries have said this is good and it's working, turn around and just nullify it on behalf of the United States," he said. "That's not going to happen."

Really? I wrote yesterday about the endgame in Vietnam, in which Congress wiped its butt with the agreement that Nixon signed.

As a reminder, here is the text of Cotton's letter:

It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system.  Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution—the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices—which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress.

First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them.  In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote.  A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate).  Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.

Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics.  For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms.  As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then—perhaps decades.

What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei.  The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.

We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress.

Obama, Kerry and the rest of the folks at the table have no intention of going to Congress for approval. They know they won't get it. As for the letter itself, it's mostly correct. I would grant Kerry the notion that a future Congress can't modify any agreement that he negotiates, but it's highly likely that a future Congress will simply ignore it, so it's a distinction without a difference.

Setting all the other kabuki aside, the real question before us remains -- is there any reason for the U.S. government to trust that Iran would abide by any agreement?