John Bolton: Not ‘so important’ for Congress to approve Iran deal

Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton on Tuesday said he believes Congress doesn’t need to weigh in on any agreement over Iran’s nuclear program.

“I don’t think it’s so important whether the Senate actually gets a shot at this or not,” he said during a panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute. “In many respects it’s a diversion from where, I think, the debate should be, which is what a wretched deal this is.”

Bolton said the Senate “has walked away, in many respects, from its responsibility and it’s pretty hard to grab it back simply in one exercise.”

{mosads}His made his comments the day after the Obama administration announced it would keep up its efforts to strike a nuclear agreement with Iran, despite missing a self-imposed March 31 deadline.

Congress in recent months has steadily pushed for a greater role in the Iran talks, claiming the administration has left lawmakers in the dark. 

To that end, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee plans to hold vote on legislation by chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and ranking member Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) that would require President Obama to submit any deal on Iran’s nuclear program to Congress for review.

Bolton, who is weighing a 2016 presidential bid, said Congress should only weigh in if the final deal contains some kind of mutual, military non-aggression pledge between Washington and Tehran.

Such a provision “could cause the agreement to rise to the level of a treaty that would require Senate advise and consent,” he said.

Without such language, the deal should be “viewed as an executive agreement, entered into without congressional participation,” according to Bolton.

He said that “people need to be realistic about what’s happened over the last 50 years,” estimating that around 90 percent of the international agreements the U.S. has entered have been executive agreements.

“When we hear outrage from the Senate, including from conservatives and Republicans, there’s an institutional failure at work here, both on the part of Congress and in successive executive branches that have allowed this to happen,” he said.

Bolton, who last week authored an op-ed that called for bombing Iran’s atomic sites, said it doesn’t matter when or if a bargain is signed because Tehran “is on a course to get nuclear weapons at a time of their choosing.”