page_title: Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
section_title: Review period in the United States Congress
hierarchical_section_title: Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action / Process / Review period in the United States Congress
caption_attribution_description: English: John Kerry, Dr. Ernest Moniz and U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, testifies about the Iranian nuclear deal before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, D.C.
context_page_description: The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known commonly as the Iran nuclear deal or Iran deal, is an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program reached in Vienna on July 14, 2015, between Iran and the P5+1 together with the European Union.
  Formal negotiations toward JCPOA began with the adoption of the Joint Plan of Action, an interim agreement signed between Iran and the P5+1 countries in November 2013. Iran and the P5+1 countries engaged in negotiations for the next 20 months and in April 2015 agreed on a framework for the final agreement. In July 2015 Iran and the P5+1 confirmed agreement on the plan along with the "Roadmap Agreement" between Iran and the IAEA.
context_section_description: Under U.S. law the JCPOA is a non-binding political commitment. According to the U.S. State Department, it specifically is not an executive agreement or a treaty. There are widespread incorrect reports that it is an executive agreement. In contrast to treaties, which require two-thirds of the Senate to consent to ratification, political commitments require no congressional approval, and are not legally binding as a matter of domestic law (although in some cases they may be binding on the U.S. as a matter of international law).
  On 22 May 2015 President Obama signed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 into law; this legislation passed by the Senate in a 98-1 vote and the House in a 400-25 vote, and was approved by Obama on 22 May 2015. Under the Act, once a nuclear agreement was negotiated with Iran, Congress had  sixty days in which it could pass a resolution of approval, a resolution of disapproval, or do nothing. The Act also included additional time beyond the sixty days for the president to veto a resolution and for Congress to take a vote on whether to override or sustain the veto. Republicans could only defeat the deal if they mustered the two-thirds of both houses of Congress needed to override an expected veto by Obama of any resolution of disapproval.
  On 19 July 2015 the State Department officially transmitted to Congress the JCPOA, its annexes, and related materials. These documents included the Unclassified Verification Assessment Report on the JCPOA and the Intelligence Community's Classified Annex to the Verification Assessment Report. The sixty-day review period began the next day, 20 July, and ended on 17 September. Senator Ted Cruz introduced a resolution seeking a delay in the review period, arguing that the 60-day congressional review under the Act should not begin until the Senate obtained a copy of all bilateral Iran-IAEA documents. This resolution did not pass. Ultimately a resolution of disapproval was brought to the Senate floor but failed. A resolution of approval was brought to the House floor, but it too failed. As a result, the agreement went into effect following congressional review period.
caption: Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, and Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew defending the JCPOA at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 23 July 2015
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