I wrote today about the U.N. pre-empting the U.S. on the Iran deal (which Thomas Sowell goes after today with hammer and tongs):

Kerry over the weekend seemed offended by the notion that Congress should get to vote before everyone else locks the Iran agreement into place: “It is presumptuous of some people to say that France, Russia, China, Germany, Britain ought to do what the Congress tells them to do.” This is admirably internationalist, but Kerry is supposed to be the secretary of state of the United States, not a representative of the interests and prerogatives of its allies and adversaries.
The New York Times reports that during the negotiations, Kerry actually pushed to delay a U.N. vote until Congress reviewed the deal. How sporting of him. It must have been vestigial loyalty to the Congress he served in for several decades. Predictably, the Iranians balked (they’re not fools), and so did the Russians and the Europeans. Equally predictably, Kerry resorted to his solution to most every knotty negotiating problem — he caved.

Meanwhile, Scott Walker and Jeb Bush have been having a debate over whether the deal can be over-turned on Day One or not, with Walker saying yes, and Bush saying it’s more complicated. Whatever the difficulties of disentangling the U.S. from the deal, it’s going to be crucial to demand that candidates are absolutely clear in their opposition because every wise old hand in foreign policy is soon going to start saying the deal is irreversible. Elliott Abrams has a characteristically intelligent take on the kerfuffle, arguing that both Walker and Bush have points:

So Bush is right as a matter of governance. Gov. Walker is right in a different way: about international politics and psychology. Max Boot explained this well in his Commentary blog. It’s critical to send the strongest possible message that the JCPOA will not be a ten-year deal but an 18-month deal, because the United States will turn away from it under a Republican president. That message must come through loud and clear. European and other investors will start making calculations soon about how they will act next year, when sanctions are removed. Opponents of the deal want them to go slowly, figuring that they may be better off to wait until November, 2017 to see who is elected president. It’s true that the JCPOA, in one of the provisions most favorable and beneficial to Iran, grandfathers in contracts signed while the deal is in effect. But the reimposition of U.S. sanctions of various kinds can become very expensive for banks and companies, and the idea would be to tell them now that the United States will investigate and prosecute violations vigorously.
More generally, the goal is to affect everyone’s behavior: Iran, the Arabs and Israelis, investors and oil purchasers, and on and on. Here’s one example: switching to Iran as an oil supplier may seem less attractive if you’re not sure how easy it will be to purchase and ship the oil after January, 2017. But this is about more than sanctions: the goal is also to avoid defeatism by our friends in the Middle East. The danger is wide adoption of the view that Iran is the rising regional power now, the United States sees it as a partner, and countries had better just adapt. Gov. Walker is emphasizing the importance of sending a crystal-clear one-line message, that the deal and the policy it represents are dead if he is president.