THIS IS WHAT WE FEARED – AT 9:58 A.M. ET:   With nuclear negotiations with Iran about to come to a scheduled end, the Obama administration is apparently planning an end-run around Congress to get through a bad deal.  From The New York Times: 

WASHINGTON — No one knows if the Obama administration will manage in the next five weeks to strike what many in the White House consider the most important foreign policy deal of his presidency: an accord with Iran that would forestall its ability to make a nuclear weapon. But the White House has made one significant decision: If agreement is reached, President Obama will do everything in his power to avoid letting Congress vote on it.

Another Obaman celebration of democracy.

Even while negotiators argue over the number of centrifuges Iran would be allowed to spin and where inspectors could roam, the Iranians have signaled that they would accept, at least temporarily, a “suspension” of the stringent sanctions that have drastically cut their oil revenues and terminated their banking relationships with the West, according to American and Iranian officials. The Treasury Department, in a detailed study it declined to make public, has concluded Mr. Obama has the authority to suspend the vast majority of those sanctions without seeking a vote by Congress, officials say.

But Mr. Obama cannot permanently terminate those sanctions. Only Congress can take that step. And even if Democrats held on to the Senate next month, Mr. Obama’s advisers have concluded they would probably lose such a vote.

“We wouldn’t seek congressional legislation in any comprehensive agreement for years,” one senior official said.

White House officials say Congress should not be surprised by this plan. They point to testimony earlier this year when top negotiators argued that the best way to assure that Iran complies with its obligations is a step-by-step suspension of sanctions — with the implicit understanding that the president could turn them back on as fast as he turned them off.

“We have been clear that initially there would be suspension of any of the U.S. and international sanctions regime, and that the lifting of sanctions will only come when the I.A.E.A. verifies that Iran has met serious and substantive benchmarks,” Bernadette Meehan, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said Friday, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency. “We must be confident that Iran’s compliance is real and sustainable over a period of time.”

But many members of Congress see the plan as an effort by the administration to freeze them out, a view shared by some Israeli officials who see a congressional vote as the best way to constrain the kind of deal that Mr. Obama might strike.

Ms. Meehan says there “is a role for Congress in our Iran policy,” but members of Congress want a role larger than consultation and advice. An agreement between Iran and the countries it is negotiating with — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — would not be a formal treaty, and thus would not require a two-thirds vote of the Senate.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat, said over the weekend that, “If a potential deal does not substantially and effectively dismantle Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program, I expect Congress will respond. An agreement cannot allow Iran to be a threshold nuclear state.” He has sponsored legislation to tighten sanctions if no agreement is reached by Nov. 24.

COMMENT:  Let's hope this is a false alarm, that either Obama gets a good agreement, which is highly unlikely considering his pathetic weakness, or that the negotiations collapse, in which case the Iranian nuclear drive is laid bare before the world.  But I don't think it's a false alarm.  Based on what I've read, from a variety of sources, Obama is perfectly willing to accept a defective deal, as long as he could sell it to the American people.  And our "allies" are, in many cases, more than eager to have any deal so they can go back to doing lucrative business with Iran.  There was even a conference in London recently to prepare businesses for a post-sanction era.

Any agreement with Iran would come after our midterms.  Obama's obligations to the Democratic Party will be over.  But the party's obligations to him would also, at that moment, be very limited, especially as the president has become so unpopular.

If there's a defective agreement, get ready for a monumental clash between Congress and president.   And get ready for Christiane Amanpour to shill for the Iranian government (she's Iranian by birth), as she's been doing regularly.

October 20, 2014