President Obama ramped up his campaign to sell the Iran deal over the August congressional recess with a sweeping address outlining the only alternative to the deal as war with Iran, and casting opponents as the same defense hawks who got the U.S. into war in Iraq.
In a lengthy and forceful appeal to swing Democrats to stick with him and support the deal, Obama called this fall’s Iran deal vote in Congress “the most consequential” foreign policy debate since the decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003.
While campaigning for president in 2008 he promised to not just end the war in Iraq, Obama recalled, he said “we had to end the mindset that got us to war in the first place … a preference for military action over diplomacy.”
“The same mindset in many cases offered by the same people who seem to have no compunction with being repeatedly wrong” produced the Iraq war, which led to more negative repercussions in the Middle East than anything the U.S. has done in the Middle East in the decades before or since, he said.
“…It’s a mindset out of step with the traditions of U.S. foreign policy where we exhaust diplomacy before war and debate matters of war and peace in the cold light of truth,” he said.
Obama likened the speech to President Kennedy’s 1963 address at the same venue in which he announced diplomatic talks with the Soviet Union and other world powers that resulted in the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.
“A number of strategists said we had to take military action against the Soviets, but the young president offered a different vision,” Obama said. “Strength in his view included a powerful armed forces … but he rejected the prevailing attitude that equated security with a perpetual war footing.”
“The agreement now reached between the international community and the Republican of Iran … builds upon this history of diplomacy,” he said.
The question, he said, is not whether to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon, but how, arguing that the Iran deal offers a “more effective, durable and verifiable” solution than any alternative, including military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Military action would only set back Iran’s nuclear program a few years at best, he argued, and would likely guarantee that international inspectors would be kicked out of the country. It would also destroy the international unity that the U.S. has spent so many years building.
Unapologetic proponents of military strikes argue that they will be surgical – “quick and painless,” the president said.
“If we have learned anything from the last decade, it’s that wars in the Middle East are anything but quick and simple,” he said to applause.
The only certainty in wars is human suffering felt most by the U.S. troops and their families, he said.
“I’ve sat beside their bedsides when they come home sometimes,” he said, noting that he’s ordered military action in seven countries during his time in office.
But he urged those calling for military action as the only way to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon to “resist the conventional wisdom and the drumbeat of war.”
“Worry less about being labeled weak and worry more about getting it right,” he said.
The president also made the case that there are no other good alternatives to the Iran deal because the U.S. won’t be able to sustain effective unilateral sanctions against Iran and other world powers, including the European Union, would not keep them going in the face of Tehran agreeing to curb its weapons program.
“Walk away from this agreement,” he said, “and you will get a better deal – for Iran.”
He also defended the deal against criticism from pro-Israel groups and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“We have to take seriously concerns in Israel,” he said, before arguing that Israel can protect itself against any conventional danger with the defense systems the U.S. has helped to provide.
“But a nuclear Iran changes those dynamics,” he said.
“I say this as someone who has don more than any other president to strengthen Israel’s security,” he stressed, noting that the U.S. is in talks with Tel Aviv to deepen its national security commitment to Israel even further.
“A nuclear armed Iran is far more dangerous to Israel, America and the world…then an Iran that benefits from sanctions relief,” he said. “I recognize that Prime Minister Netanyahu disagrees. I believe he is wrong. I believe the facts support this deal.”
In a swipe at Republican’s near unity against the deal, at one point during the more than 50-minute address, Obama said hardliners in Iran who oppose the deal are “making common cause” with the Republican caucus.
The comment earned a sharp rebuke from Speaker John Boehner’s office, who said the president is relying on false partisan attacks and fear to corral support for the deal.
“As Congress and the American people review this deal, President Obama’s rhetoric is raising far more questions than answers,” said Boehner spokesman Cory Fritz. “Instead of offering facts and proving this deal will make America safer, the president is relying on partisan attacks, false claims, and fear.”
The timing of the speech, just before the Senate joins the House for the August recess, and Obama departs for Martha’s Vineyard for two weeks, is designed as one last high-profile presidential push before an unpredictable few weeks when lawmakers will head home to their districts and face a flood of lobbying on both sides of the issue.
With most Republicans expected to vote in unison to sink the deal, the White House needs to hold Democrats together over the August recess.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest earlier this week predicted that House Democrats would be able to sustain a presidential veto of any GOP-backed resolution of disapproval. But he did not express the same confidence in the Senate.
With pro-Israel opponents of the deal set to spend tens of millions of dollars on TV ads and an August lobbying blitz in districts across the country, Obama is facing a conflicting dynamic. The public is growing increasingly wary of the deal Democrats in Congress mostly have been falling in line to block GOP efforts to thwart its implementation.
Poll results indicate that the more Americans know about the agreement, reached July 14 in Vienna between Iran and six world powers, the less they like of it.
A July 23-28 Quinnipiac University poll of 1,644 registered voters released Monday found that voters opposed the deal 57 percent to 28 percent, with only a bare majority (52 percent) of Democrats saying they support it. The poll, which used telephone interviews, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.
Meanwhile, the president has secured the support of several Democratic lawmakers seen as key to sustaining any veto of congressional action to disapprove of the deal, including Sens. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Bill Nelson of Florida, and Rep. Adam Schiff of California, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
Other top Democrats who were expected to come out against the deal did so this week, including Rep. Steve Israel of New York, the highest-ranking Jewish Democrat in the House, as well as Reps. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., and Ted Deutch, D-Fla.
Charles Hoskinson contributed to this report.
