The Joint comprehensive Plan of Action

"If members of Congress see this agreement as ill-advised and dangerous, they have a responsibility -- to their constituents and to history -- to tell the truth. Those who endorse this deal will own it -- and will share responsibility for what it brings."
"What's more, it would be a grave mistake to set the precedent that the U Security Council -- including such permanent members as Russia and China and such non-permanent members as Venezuela and Chad -- constitute a global government with the power to make significant decisions for the American people while the elected representatives of the American people are marginalized. If that isn't technically a surrender of American sovereignty, it certainly opens that door -- and, I'm afraid, removes the remaining hinges."
"As Mead [constitutional scholar Walter Russell Mead] put it, the president 'is really requiring congress to accept a permanent and significant diminution in its power for the sake of an Iran deal that few members view with enthusiasm. The precedent he is setting changes the Constitution, essentially abrogating the treaty power of Congress any time a president can get a Security Council resolution to incorporate the terms of an executive agreement'."
Clifford D. May, president, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

"I wish to enlighten the authors [47 Republican senators warning the Iran nuclear agreement could be abrogated once Obama leaves office] that if the next administration revokes any agreement with the stroke of a pen, as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law."
"We will have a resolution in the Security Council ... which will be mandatory for all member states."
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, New York

New York Rally Draws Thousands Demanding that Congress Reject Iran Nuclear Deal

The United Nations Security Council on Monday endorsed a resolution that "calls upon all member states" to refrain from "actions that undermine implementation of commitments under the JCPOA", and it "urges" the United States to honour the commitments included in the agreement. This is language that is open to interpretation, bypassing making the resolution binding on all signatories; presumably bypassing the Islamic Republic of Iran, whom it is assumed must honour the details it agreed upon in achieving the agreement. 

A former State Department and National Security Council legal adviser points out that the resolution has no requirement that such actions be regarded "as a matter of international law". Should Congress not approve the deal that the Obama administration steered Secretary of State John Kerry to achieve as a triumph of American diplomacy in the face of Iranian obstinacy in recognizing its obligations under nuclear-non-proliferation, and refuse to lift U.S. sanctions, the U.S. would be entirely within its rights.

The lifting of sanctions is the single most vital aspect to Iran of these negotiations. Representing an acknowledgement, however reluctant, of the international community that Iran will eventually in the near future achieve its nuclear aspirations. And on its way to that achievement, it will no longer be punished. The European Union is so anxious to get on with normalizing relations with Iran to enable it to licitly purchase Iranian gas and oil in the face of Russia's belligerent turn, it has already, before the ink has even dried, arranged for a trade and investment conference in Vienna.

Iranian state-controlled Press TV  has reported that Iran is pledging to spend more than $180 billion on oil and gas projects to reassure the EU that their energy needs will be fulfilled courtesy of Iran.

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"We are recently witnessing the return of European investors to the country. Some of these negotiations have concluded, and we have approved and granted them the foreign investment licenses and protections", crowed Iranian Deputy Economy Minister Mohammad Khazaei.

Who informed conference attendees the Iranian government has lost no time in granting licenses for over $2-billion-worth of business projects with European countries. "Even in the past couple of weeks we have approved more than $2 billion of projects in Iran by European companies", Mr. Khazaei assured the anxious Europeans. They appear blissfully indebted to one another, good friends all.

As for the critical issue of snap inspections by IAEA inspectors, more commonly referred to as "anytime, anywhere" inspections, while the American negotiators were initially firm that under any final deal with Iran immediate inspections without warning would be required to ensure that no covert actions could take place harmful to the intent to keep Iran from its nuclear weapons goals, this has been denied, with a White House fact sheet stating "'Anytime, Anywhere' inspections are simply unnecessary thanks to the deal", as though the issue is of no consequence.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz had stated back in April that "We expect to have anywhere, anytime access in the sense of a well-defined process with a well-defined end time for access to places that are suspected of out-of-bounds activities", but now there are denials all around that any such demand had ever been made, let alone counted on, a critical requirement if monitoring is to be relied upon.

To which David Albright, a former weapons inspector, now president of the Institute for Science & International Security explains: "Of course it takes some time for an inspector to get some access. We are talking about a matter of a day or so, not three weeks. A reasonable interpretation of what Moniz said in April would be a few days, not the 24 days in the final agreement."

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