International law is the refuge of the scoundrel

International law is the refuge of the scoundrel. No wonder Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif, played that card this week. 

Anyone who’s ever listened to speeches at the United Nations knows it: 

The more a country ignores international norms — the more aggressive its policies, the more it oppresses its people and flips a finger at human decency — the louder its representatives scream about how they alone defend international law. 

On Monday, Zarif’s response to the letter from 47 GOP senators got gigabytes of applause in the Twitterverse, where many reckoned that he had “schooled” the Republicans on the fine nuances of international, and even US, law. 

Now, you can agree or disagree with elected American officials who write to officials in other countries. 

The senators’ letter (in English and Farsi) informed Iran’s leadership that any agreement on the nuclear issue can be tossed out by the next president, unless approved by Congress. 

Hillary Clinton on Tuesday called the letter “out of step with the best traditions of American leadership.” 

Her reaction, and similar comments from other leading Democrats, may harm the drive to gather a veto-proof Senate majority for congressional action on the expected Iran pact. 

It’s a legitimate American debate, but one with no place for the Iranian foreign minister — the guy who heads the Iranian team that’s trying to legalize his country’s nuclear-weapons program in negotiations with Secretary of State John Kerry and five counterparts. 

“It seems that the [senators] not only do not understand international law, but are not fully cognizant of the nuances of their own Constitution when it comes to presidential powers in the conduct of foreign policy,” Zarif said in a statement released Monday. 

“I wish to enlighten the [senators] that if the next administration revokes any agreement with the stroke of a pen, as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law,” Zarif said. Ah. International law. 

In fact, plenty of presidents have canceled their predecessors’ international obligations, promises and agreements. 

Soon after taking office, President Obama canceled agreements with Poland and the Czech Republic to deploy missile-defense systems. 

He also informed Israel that President George W. Bush’s letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, setting US policy on the borders of a future Palestinian state, was dead to him. 

Nevertheless, Zarif has a point. International treaties indeed oblige future administrations. 

But, oops: Obama doesn’t want his Iran deal to be a treaty. For that, he’d need to get the Senate to ratify it, as his Cold War predecessors did with the various arms-control pacts they signed with the Soviets. 

But Zarif (and Kerry?) found a loophole: America is a UN member — and we joined under a treaty. 

The Iran nuke agreement, Zarif said, will be “concluded with the participation of five other countries, including all permanent members of the [UN] Security Council, and will also be endorsed by a Security Council resolution.” 

So maybe not a binding pact in American eyes — but, ah, international law. 

What a farce. For over a decade, the Security Council has demanded the end of Iran’s uranium enrichment and other nuclear activities. 

It has passed multiple resolutions — the very stuff of international law — demanding just that. The mullahs laughed, ignored them and advanced their nuke pursuit. 

They also cheated, obfuscated and made a farce of every other law in the UN books. (A General Assembly resolution, for example, urges every country to teach the history of the Holocaust. Next month, Tehran hosts its latest convention of Holocaust deniers.) 

It’s easy for rogue nations like Iran to manipulate “international law” and read into it whatever they see fit. 

Don’t we, like everyone else, have a “right” under international law to enrich uranium? (No, they don’t: Iran agreed to limit its own rights under international law when it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.) 

Anyway, presidents don’t swear to uphold and defend the UN Charter. Article XI of the Constitution lists international treaties third, after the Constitution itself and US laws, as part of the “supreme law of the land.” 

Indeed: Under the 2008 Supreme Court ruling in Medellin v. Texas, international treaties are not binding when they conflict with US law. 

But set aside the legal debates. More important: Why should we put any credit in the words of a representative of a rogue state — a genocidal, expansionist, terrorist regime? 

Obama this week compared the letter-writing senators to Iran’s hard-liners. It would’ve been just as insulting to compare them to the “moderate” Zarif.