First Draft

An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran:

It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. It’s really complicated. We even have a TV show that helps us understand it.  Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution—the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices—which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress. It’s a lot like buying a car. A really big American car. Just a word of advice: Don’t pay for the undercoating.

First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them. We spend a large part of every day hollering and gesturing at one another in annoyance.  In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote. That’s fractions.  A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate). More fractions.  Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement. Executive agreements are like dust in the wind. Which is a pretty cool song by Kansas. Which is a state in our country. It’s pretty flat.

 Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics.  For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms.  That works out to be like seven hundred dog years. As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then—perhaps decades. Some of us never leave our offices. We are afraid to. Many of us know little of the outside world as a result.  A subset of these know little of personal hygiene.

 What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. So there.  The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time. And if you’ve ever seen how vicious a pen stroke can be, you just wait.

 We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress. Oh, and my dad could beat up your dad any day of the week. And in this particular metaphor I don’t mean our president because we don’t like him. Get it? We've been blowing up countries like yours for nearly a hundred years, so just watch yourselves, see? 

Sincerely,

A whole bunch of guys with the letter R after their name (R)