Oh, c'mon, folks, let's cut Brad Sherman some slack on this one. He's not saying anything that any of us didn't already know to be the case over six and a half years ago:
California-30 Representative Brad Sherman warns that even if Congress were to override Barack Obama’s veto of the Iran deal, the president could still get the deal he wants.
Sherman, a Democrat who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, grilled [Commissar] of State John Kerry Tuesday over whether the administration would follow the law....
Corker-Cardin/Menendez, in context.
....if Congress votes against the administration’s deal with Iran and overrides the president’s veto.
“So, you’re not committed to following the law if you think it’s a bad law?” Sherman asked.
Even though Obama signed it, indicating that he thought that "law" was peachy-keen at the time.
“No,” Kerry said. “I said I’m not going to deal with a hypothetical, that’s all.”
No, the Regime is not going to abide by Corker-Cardin/Menendez in the inconceivable event that Congress were to reject O's Iran nuclear sellout and then override his veto of it. And that's just peachy-keen for Congressman Sherman:
Sherman later told reporters Wednesday that there were different options on the table that Obama could seriously consider if the Congress overrode his veto.
It's amazing how many options open up for a president when even illegal laws are seen as optional rather than mandatory. Such as O simply refusing to reimpose sanctions when Iran cheats (if we ever detect it, which the mullahs' blanket, preemptive veto power over inspections makes....complicated). I'd add giving the nod-nod/wink-wink green light to "the five world powers" to load up Tehran with as many nuclear warheads as their ample territory can hold, but The One pretty much already did that by ramming the "deal" through the U.N. Security Council before even giving Boehner and McConnell so much as a ringy-dinghy.
And, as you no doubt already surmised, Sherman's rationale for this rather....creative legal interpretation is exactly what you thought it was:
“This is not a treaty. It’s not a legislative executive agreement. It is the lowest form of temporary accommodation between a group of national leaders. Under the Vienna convention on treaties this is as low as you can go. As far as being binding it is not binding at all on anybody,” Sherman argued. [emphases added]
So....doesn't that bolster Scott Walker's declaration that he's going to abrogate the "deal" on his first day in office? As well as kind of defeating the whole purpose of twelve years of negotiations, even if the mullahs have no reason whatsodamnever to cheat?
“But what we have to do is prevent confusion in America and around the world. If it’s not a treaty, not second to a treaty and not third to a treaty — if it’s the lowest level, but the image of it looks like a ratified treaty, then politically it is and legally it isn’t.” [emphasis added]
And y'all thought Democrats couldn't be transparent. Oh ye of little faith.
By the way, as a sort of pyrrhic curiosity, here's how the Vienna Convention On Treaties defines a, well, treaty:
“Treaty” means an international agreement concluded between States in written form and governed by international law, whether embodied in a single instrument or in two or more related instruments and whatever its particular designation.
No further comment necessary. Or so it seems to me.
Happily for the White House, they're following the Obama Convention On Treaties, which defines a treaty as "Whatever Barack Obama says it is on any given day".
Or until the Iranian nukes begin to fall, whichever comes first.
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