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Notes -
I'd add that failing to negotiate the JCPOA as an Article II treaty also has implications regarding its effectiveness; properly following processes actually has an impact on how seriously the party you're negotiating with takes the agreement. Foreign leaders are very aware of the political capital necessary to acquire a two-thirds Senate majority, which makes it highly unlikely that the U.S. will renege on the engagement. The President’s predecessors are less likely to back out when support is high; legislators are less likely to pass laws inconsistent with the treaty, putting the U.S. in breach; and foreign heads of state are less likely to resist execution or withdraw knowing that the President, the legislature, their predecessors, and the American people stand behind the agreement. There is a reason why these kind of significant nonproliferation agreements have traditionally been negotiated as treaties: these kinds of matters deserve focus and commitment.
In the absence of this, why in the world would Iran take the agreement seriously whatsoever given that there had never been a demonstration of American commitment to it? Keep in mind too that Iran is a country with a long history of secretly exceeding limitations placed on its nuclear program. The JCPOA was negotiated in the first place because of Iran flouting multiple legally binding UNSCRs for a period of years and blatantly violating its Safeguards Agreement; they were willing to lose billions of dollars in sanctions to continue pursuing nuclear weapons in secret. Without the necessary two-thirds majority, the JCPOA was effectively a non-binding statement of intent; it was a gentlemen's agreement without much force behind it, one which involved a hefty frontloaded benefit to Iran (if adhered to) while basically just asking for Iran's word that it would not violate the rules of international law - something it already had been doing surreptitiously for years on end prior to the JCPOA. Such a weighty and fraught agreement at least deserved to be a treaty, and circumventing the mechanisms meant to ensure consensus was a failure on the Obama administration's part.
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