Even before President Obama announced Thursday that lengthy and slow-moving international negotiations had ended with only a framework listing some parameters to resolve issues toward a nuclear weapons deal with Iran, major media outlets were working hard to justify the president’s conciliatory approach with the Islamic republic.
Talks over Iran’s nuclear weapons program concluded in Switzerland Thursday with the release of “parameters” for a deal that could lift sanctions on Iran, but negotiators from the United States — along with the other United Nations Security Council countries and Germany — have been hard-pressed to demonstrate that the repeatedly extended negotiations produced any new material. Obama’s comments in the White House rose garden were heavy on if/then statements and preemptive attacks on skeptics of the deal — whose numbers are growing and include prominent members of the president’s own party. Even former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean has suggested the U.S. should take a tougher approach in negotiating with Iran.
But many national news organizations continue to say the negotiations’ lukewarm results and repeated delays in a self-imposed deadline were evidence of the president’s wisdom and rarefied intellect.
“The president’s decision to keep negotiating reflects both the importance he has placed on the talks and his particular view of how American leadership, persistence and engagement with enemies can change the world,” wrote Washington Post White House reporter Greg Jaffe Wednesday.
Negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear development program extended two days beyond the self-imposed Tuesday deadline after President Obama called on U.S. diplomats to disregard the targeted date, according to The New York Times.
The Times, citing “two people familiar” with the matter, said that blowing the deadline would “make it clear that the president was ready to walk away and leave all sanctions on Iran in place, and see if that would change the dynamic.”
A report in Bloomberg said, “For the Obama administration, it makes sense to stay at the table as long as any progress is being made.”
But critics of the negotiations, especially Republicans in Congress, have said the deadline extension gave Iran the upper-hand in the deal-making — a suspicion strengthened by the release of the parameters. It showed, they said, a lack of will from the U.S. to walk away from a country that is openly hostile to the West.
“Deadlines have to mean something,” Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton said on CNN Wednesday. “When you are negotiating and you have deadlines, you have to show that you are serious and then walk away from the table and then come back in a position of strength, not a position of weakness.”
In his announcement Thursday, Obama called the framework a “historic agreement,” though he spent a large portion of the address speaking about the possibility that Iran would not comply with negotiated deal — at one point raising the specter of all-out war.
“The second option is we can bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, thereby starting another war in the Middle East, and setting back Iran’s program by a few years — in other words, setting it back by a fraction of the time that this deal will set it back,” the president said. “Meanwhile we’d ensure that Iran would race ahead to try and build a bomb.”
The New York Times called the framework “a surprisingly specific and comprehensive understanding.”
