Following a successful effort by 42 Democratic senators to block a resolution of disapproval, the nuclear agreement between Iran, the United States, and its international negotiating partners, was not derailed during the congressional review period. Winning this hard-fought victory required the Obama administration to learn lessons from its previous efforts to pass major legislation through Congress; protecting and effectively implementing the Iran nuclear agreement will require more of the same.
For the Iran agreement, the administration put on a full-court coordinated campaign. The energetic and peripatetic Secretary of State, John Kerry, was at the forefront and Department of Energy Secretary, Dr. Ernest Moniz, proved to be a secret weapon, both in negotiating the agreement’s technical aspects and in explaining it in layman’s terms. President Obama and Vice President Biden were fully engaged—and so were their key staff members.
But as we learned, with so many other wins in these hyper-partisan times, the fight is never over.
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