There's no loser like a sore loser. The anti-Iran deal camp is painfully aware that the President has enough votes to block any potential override of a congressional resolution disapproving the Iran deal. Now that it appears they've lost, some in the anti-deal camp are starting to complain that the rules of the game weren't followed. Standard sore loser's gambit.
Here the theory is that, under the Corker legislation, which frames the current congressional deliberations on the Iran deal, the President is required to disclose to Congress the entire agreement including any collateral accords. The failure to disclose IAEA understandings with Iran, it is claimed, violates this provision, and thus invalidates the entire deliberation under the Corker law. The argument is well-enough presented in this recent piece in the National Review: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423613/obama-iran-deal-kill.
In quoting from the legislation, what the piece selectively deletes, however, is language that confines disclosure obligations to an agreement "that includes the United States, commits the United States to take action, or pursuant to which the United States commits or otherwise agrees to take action". The IAEA understandings with Iran are clearly arrangements to which the United States is not a party, and there is no evidence that they could commit the US in any way. This is further reinforced by the fact that the IAEA, a specialized agency of the United Nations, is not a party to the Iran deal, i.e. to the JCPOA. Indeed, under the JCPOA the United States has committed to observe "all relevant rules and regulations of the IAEA with regard to the protection of information." Calling the understandings between the IAEA and Iran a "side-deal" doesn't make them into documents that fall within the defined meaning of the expression "agreement" in the Corker legislation; the "side agreements" referred to there are ones, as noted, that include or commit the United States. This is crystal-clear from the grammar and syntax of the law, which presents inter alia "side agreements" as included within the stipulated class of agreements that include or commit the United States. But this reading is supported not only by textualism; it is also dictated by common sense. A statute should not be construed as requiring the executive to do something it manifestly does not have the power or authority to do. The United States has no sovereign power over the IAEA (whereas, by contrast, the executive does, as a negotiating party entering into an accord of its own free will, to insist as a condition of consent that any agreement it signs be public and transparent).
