President Barack Obama delivered his nuclear deal with Iran to Congress with a threat: He'll veto any attempt to reject it. Lawmakers should ignore the warning and do their duty. They have a responsibility to thoroughly vet the pact to assure it meets the goal of containing the Iranians as a nuclear threat.

There are enough reasons to suspect the deal won't contain Iran for Congress to allow itself to be cowed by a veto threat. Verification is too fraught a process to be glossed over by reassuring rhetoric, and Iran has been left with too much of its nuclear infrastructure intact to merit the confidence the president is exuding that the treaty will effectively constrain it.

Obama tried to cut out Congress from its traditional role of voting on arms deals. But lawmakers rightly passed, by a veto-proof majority, a bill asserting their review authority. They now have 60 days to go over the details and determine if the agreement is in the best interest of the United States and its allies.

They should use that time to get solid answers from the administration about why the agreement meets so few of the goals the president established at the start of negotiations.

For example, none of Iran's nuclear facilities will be closed, and no centrifuges will be dismantled. Iran will maintain the ability to restart its march toward a nuclear weapon with almost no effort.

Rather than the vigorous inspections the president claimed in announcing the deal Tuesday, considerable roadblocks and delays are built into the deal that could thwart the type of investigations necessary to assure compliance.

Significant sanction relief will come in the short term, rather than being phased in based on Iran's compliance, as the president originally demanded. As early as December, $150 billion could be available to Iran, money the State Department openly frets will be used to fund terrorism. No wonder the leaders of Hezbollah praised the deal Tuesday.

A new and very disturbing wrinkle was added to the pact to push it over the finish line. The arms ban on Iran will be gradually lifted, allowing it to eventually import and develop the technology for inter-continental ballistic missiles, the delivery systems for nuclear warheads. That would explain the enthusiasm of Russian Premier Vladimir Putin, whose nation is Iran's most likely arms source.

This pact will not defang Iran, as was originally intended. Rather, it simply delays the moment at which Iran becomes a nuclear power, and not for all that long.

By Obama's own assessment, if Iran meticulously follows the letter of the agreement, it will be a threshold nuclear power in 12-13 years. Compliance may be the most efficient route to its goals.

Meanwhile, the pact risks triggering an arms race in the region. The Saudis have said publicly that they want what Iran gets. Since this deal sets Iran on a deliberate course toward nuclear weapons capability, expect Saudi Arabia and others to put that process in motion as well.

Perhaps the greatest hope is that, as more of the details are revealed, this agreement is deemed so bad that Congress can muster the votes to override a presidential veto.

Congress is the last line of defense to assure a destabilizing deal does not get rubber stamped. It should set aside politics and meticulously review this deal for its long-term impact on the security of America and its allies.

REPRINTED FROM THE DETROIT NEWS