Oops: Iran deal impossible to implement without violating law Obama signed in 2012

Great find here by James Rosen at Fox News. Supposedly the Iran deal affirms that all existing laws pertaining to Iran remain in place with the implementation of the agreement. But as you'll see here, that gives us quite the paradox, as the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012 makes it clearly and explicitly illegal for the government to take the actions necessary to lift sanctions against Iran:

At issue is a passage tucked away in ancillary paperwork attached to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, as the Iran nuclear deal is formally known. Specifically, Section 5.1.2 of Annex II provides that in exchange for Iranian compliance with the terms of the deal, the U.S. "shall...license non-U.S. entities that are owned or controlled by a U.S. person to engage in activities with Iran that are consistent with this JCPOA." In short, this means that foreign subsidiaries of U.S. parent companies will, under certain conditions, be allowed to do business with Iran. The problem is that the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act (ITRA), signed into law by President Obama in August 2012, was explicit in closing the so-called "foreign sub" loophole. Indeed, ITRA also stipulated, in Section 218, that when it comes to doing business with Iran, foreign subsidiaries of U.S. parent firms shall in all cases be treated exactly the same as U.S. firms: namely, what is prohibited for U.S. parent firms has to be prohibited for foreign subsidiaries, and what is allowed for foreign subsidiaries has to be allowed for U.S. parent firms. What's more, ITRA contains language, in Section 605, requiring that the terms spelled out in Section 218 shall remain in effect until the president of the United States certifies two things to Congress: first, that Iran has been removed from the State Department's list of nations that sponsor terrorism, and second, that Iran has ceased the pursuit, acquisition, and development of weapons of mass destruction.

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Additional executive orders and statutes signed by President Obama, such as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, have reaffirmed that all prior federal statutes relating to sanctions on Iran shall remain in full effect. How does Obama get around this? The obvious answer is that he simply ignores it and implements the deal anyway. That's what he usually does when laws - even ones he signed - get in the way of his agenda of the moment. He probably figures he got away with it twice where ObamaCare was concerned and at this point it's child's play - since no one has had any success pursuing judicial remedies against his lawlessness. Does that hold true here as well? Let's consider the differences between the two situations. In the 2012 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the individual mandate in ObamaCare, we were talking about a ruling on the constitutionality of a provision in the law, and the Supremes rescued ObamaCare via Chief Justice Roberts's creative redefinition of a fine as a tax. In the 2015 ruling that upheld subsidies for those buying on the federal exchange, the Court was able to save ObamaCare through an interpretation of what "established by the State" meant. In both cases, ObamaCare was helped in part by the fact that it's so poorly written as to be open to multiple interpretations. That's really not the case with the ITRA. It's clear and explicit in saying that U.S. companies and their foreign sub-entities are prohibited from doing business with Iran. In no way can Obama claim the authority to make a deal on his own that abrogates that law. Now the problem would arise, I would think, in getting a test case. The first company that does business with Iran because the nuclear deal has "lifted the sanctions" will be in violation of the the ITRA. But that's only an issue when the Justice Department decides to prosecute, and Obama controls the Justice Department. Assuming he calls off his ******* dogs as Hillary might say, there is no defendant to claim his actions are permissible because the Iran deal abrogated the ITRA, thus setting up a judicial fight to determine if that's true. This once again leaves congressional Republicans - who are having some problems of their own at the moment - to come up with yet another legal strategy to challenge Obama for not enforcing federal law. That hasn't gone too well to date. We've got a president who blatantly ignores the law whenever he feels like it, and a Republican Congress that can't seem to figure out what to do about it - and gets accused by the media of wanting to "shut down the government" whenever it tries. (And is terrified of that.) So, yeah, Obama probably gets away with this too. The next president, of course, is free to enforce the ITRA and while he's at it to throw out the rest of the deal, which he should. Just a friendly reminder that there is no remedy for executive branch lawlessness so long as we have a lawless president and a feckless Congress.