Following President Donald Trump's announcement today that he would not recertify the Iran Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA) and was withdrawing the US from the deal, I was interested to learn more about what made it possible for the POTUS to exit the agreement so easily. In exploring this topic, I found a related question on SE that explained that the JCPOA was an Executive Agreement rather than a Treaty under Article II of the US Constitution. An answer to a different SE question explains some of the differences between these two kinds of agreements.
These answers only appear to reflect the definition of international agreements in the US, though I'm sure other countries have analogous rules or laws. This left me wondering about how the respective governing bodies of the other signatories to the agreement addressed the status of the agreement, and when/how this distinction is made. Thus, I have a few questions...
Question(s)
- Does the JCPOA have a similar 'non-Treaty' status for the other governing bodies involved?
- How is it decided what kind of agreement will be made when multiple signatories are involved and each government might have a different definition?
- Is it possible that a given agreement could be a Treaty in one nation, but not in another?
- If they desired to, could the other governments included in the JCPOA (particularly Iran) simply decline to continue to participate like the US has?
Correction (05/14/2018)
According to the answer given to a different question related to the JCPOA, the Iran Nuclear Deal was not actually considered an Executive Agreement in the US. This is clarified further by this article which cites a letter to the US Congress from the US State Department which stated that the JCPOA was a non-binding Political Commitment.