MARCO RUBIO: Writes in today’s NRO, “Iran Thumbs Its Nose at America and Obama Does Nothing.”

Last week, the White House hailed Iran for shipping most of its low-enriched uranium stockpile to Russia. Secretary of State John Kerry called it “one of the most significant steps Iran has taken” under the nuclear deal signed this past summer. But the real news happened several days earlier: Even as the administration heaped praise on the mullahs in Tehran, Iranian Revolutionary Guard ships fired unguided rockets near a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz.

This provocation is just the latest in a series of dangerous acts committed by Iran that belie President Obama’s rosy promises of putting pressure on Iran for its aggressive actions. . . .

Iran has already stretched the terms of Obama’s deal. Iran is now trying to claim that a U.S. law aimed at protecting Americans from terrorists trying to come to the United States is an American violation of the agreement. This is a blatant attempt to pressure the Obama administration not to seek or enforce any new sanctions whatsoever, even those targeting human-rights abuses and support for terrorism, which are allowed under the deal. It has twice tested ballistic missiles — violating a U.N. Security Council resolution. On December 31 the supposed moderate Iranian president Hassan Rouhani even stated that Iran would be expanding its ballistic missile program. This comes just weeks after the Obama administration joined with its diplomatic partners to sweep Iran’s past illicit nuclear-weapons activities under the rug. . . .

That is why as president I will scrap this fundamentally flawed deal. Instead, I will reimpose the sanctions that President Obama waives and will impose crushing new measures targeting all of Iran’s illicit behavior.

It’s almost as if President Obama is an apologist for Iran. Rubio at least tried to insert a “poison pill” into Corker-Cardin (which effectively approved of the Iran deal as an ordinary statute rather than a treaty) to condition the deal on Iran’s explicit recognition of Israel.

But as Bruce Ackerman and David Golove recently argued in The Atlantic,  liberals/progressive (ironically) assert that repudiation by a Republican President would violate Article II, section three’s command that the President “take care that laws be faithfully executed.”

This argument is specious, as Corker-Cardin was not an expression of approval of the Iran deal, but instead a decision by Congress not to approve of the Iran deal as a treaty (as it should, constitutionally, have been handled). Since Congress has never “approved” of the Iran deal by majority vote, a future President that chooses to repudiate the deal could hardly be characterized as failing to “faithfully execute” a law enacted by Congress.