Obama rips Iran-deal critics

Credibility at stake, he says of U.S.

“Walk away from this agreement, and you will get a better deal — for Iran,” President Barack Obama warned in a speech Wednesday at American University in Washington.
“Walk away from this agreement, and you will get a better deal — for Iran,” President Barack Obama warned in a speech Wednesday at American University in Washington.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Wednesday assailed critics of the nuclear deal with Iran as "selling a fantasy" to the U.S., warning Congress that blocking the accord would damage the nation's credibility and increase the likelihood of more war in the Middle East.

photo

The New York Times

Iranians pass a commercial project under construction in Tehran earlier this summer. Critics of the nuclear agreement with Iran say the country could use billions of dollars in sanctions relief to finance attacks against the West.

photo

AP

U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., speaks in front of the Arkansas state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark., Tuesday, May 26, 2015.

photo

AP

Chairman Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn, left, accompanied by Ranking Member Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., right, speaks as Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Treasury Jack Lew, and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz testify at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Thursday, July 23, 2015, to review the Iran nuclear agreement.

Besides challenging opponents at home, Obama cast Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an isolated international opponent of the accord, saying, "I do not doubt his sincerity, but I believe he is wrong."

The president's blunt remarks, in an hour-long address in front of about 200 people at American University, were part of an intense lobbying campaign by the White House ahead of Congress' vote next month on the international agreement. Opponents of the agreement have streamed to Capitol Hill to make their case, and they have spent tens of millions of dollars on advertisements.

A deal with Iran represents U.S. pragmatism rather than weakness, Obama said.

"It does not ensure a warming between our two countries," he said. "But it achieves one of our most critical security objectives. As such, it is a very good deal."

The agreement would require Iran to dismantle most of its nuclear program for at least a decade in exchange for billions of dollars in relief from international sanctions. But Netanyahu and some critics in the U.S. argue that it would not stop Iran from building a bomb.

The stakes are high, Obama said, contending that it isn't just Iran's ability to build a bomb that is on the line but also "America's credibility as the anchor of the international system."

"The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some form of war," Obama said. "Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon.

"How can we in good conscience justify war before we've tested a diplomatic agreement that achieves our objectives?"

Opposition to the agreement, he said, stems from "knee-jerk partisanship that has become all too familiar, rhetoric that renders every decision made to be a disaster, a surrender."

Obama aggressively made his case for the deal by linking critics to those who pushed for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"I have repeatedly challenged anyone opposed to this deal to put forward a better, plausible alternative," he said. "I have yet to hear one. What I've heard instead are the same types of arguments that we heard in the run-up to the Iraq war."

While Obama was an early opponent of that war, several of his top foreign-policy advisers voted to authorize the conflict, including Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Drawing on more distant history, Obama said the Iran deal was in line with the United States' long tradition of "strong, principled diplomacy" with adversaries, including the Soviet Union.

The venue for Obama's speech was symbolic. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy chose the American University campus for a major address on the U.S.' relationship with the Soviet Union, its Cold War foe, and urged a ban on testing nuclear weapons.

Kennedy rejected the prevailing arguments in "some foreign-policy circles" that would have the U.S. on perpetual war footing, Obama said. Instead, the address set the stage for the U.S. and the Soviet Union to step back even while relations remained hostile, Obama said.

"Not every conflict was averted," he said. "But the world avoided nuclear catastrophe, and we created the time and the space to win the Cold War without firing a shot at the Soviets."

Obama said a vote to reject the deal would isolate the U.S. and allow Iran to move closer to acquiring a nuclear weapon even as international sanctions unravel.

"In that sense, the critics are right. Walk away from this agreement, and you will get a better deal -- for Iran," he said.

Obama said he has no illusions about Iran's support for terrorism and takes seriously its incendiary rhetoric about the U.S. But he also said the Iranian hard-liners chanting "Death to America" in the streets of Tehran don't represent all of Iran.

"In fact, it's those hard-liners who are most comfortable with the status quo," he said. "It's those hard-liners chanting 'Death to America' who have been most opposed to the deal. They're making common cause with the Republican caucus."

'Over the line'

Lawmakers who oppose the deal said they were not convinced by Obama's comments, and some said they resented the president's tone. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, said the speech had done a disservice to lawmakers in both parties who "have serious and heartfelt concerns."

"These Democrats and Republicans deserved serious answers today, not some outrageous attempt to equate their search for answers with supporting chants of 'Death to America,'" McConnell said, adding that Democrats who had declared their opposition would be "especially insulted" by the president's remarks. "This goes way over the line of civil discourse."

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said in a statement after the president's speech that Obama "presented a false choice between military action and his deeply flawed agreement with Iran. But President Obama is hiding behind this false choice because he knows he can't defend this deal on its merits. No one understands the horrors of war more than a soldier who has fought one."

Cotton, a former Army captain, was quoted Wednesday in The Times of Israel as saying the United States could use military strikes to eliminate Iran's nuclear infrastructure.

"You can destroy facilities. I don't think any military expert in the United States or elsewhere would say the U.S. military is not capable to setting Iran's nuclear facilities back to day zero," Cotton was quoted as saying. "Can we eliminate it forever? No, because any advanced industrialized country can develop nuclear weapons in four to seven years, from zero. But we can set them back to day zero."

Obama's diplomatic overtures to Iran, a centerpiece of his foreign-policy agenda, have put him at odds with Republicans as well as with Netanyahu, who has campaigned vigorously against the deal.

"President Obama's speech today is just another example of his reliance on endless strawmen to divert attention from his failed policies," Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Wednesday in a joint statement.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters that he remains "very skeptical" of the agreement the U.S. and its partners reached with Iran.

"I think everyone in the United States knows that this president is not going to carry out military action against Iran," he said. "Iran knows that."

The president has argued that if Congress blocks the accord, the European Union and the United Nations will lift their sanctions anyway, collapsing the best leverage the international community has to stop Iran from building a bomb.

Critics contend Iran will use an influx of funds now frozen under the sanctions to boost terrorist activity around the Middle East.

Republicans also have demanded to review confidential agreements between Iran and the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, which will inspect the country's nuclear facilities under the accord. The Obama administration has promised private briefings on the agreements for lawmakers.

Despite criticism from GOP senators, the head of the U.N. agency said Wednesday that he cannot give Congress a copy of the organization's nuclear inspection document with Iran.

Agency chief Yukiya Amano, who met with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he has a legal obligation to keep the document confidential.

"Imagine if a country provides me with confidential information ... and I do not honor the commitment, no country will share information with us," Amano told reporters after the meeting.

"That is the case with the United States, too," he said. "We have a confidential agreement with the United States, and I cannot share it."

Earlier at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Iran, Corker asked a lead U.S. negotiator of the deal, "Why now will you not give us the documents that exist that are so important to all of us relative to the integrity of this? Why not?"

Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman said the U.S. does not have the paperwork, but she offered to tell senators in a classified briefing later in the day what she knows about the separate document between Iran and nuclear inspectors that is part of the nuclear accord.

"I did see the provisional documents," she said. "I didn't see the final documents."

She also told the committee that the U.S. stands ready to discuss further enhancements to security for Israel, noting that Defense Secretary Ashton Carter recently traveled to Israel.

The nuclear accord was finalized last month in Vienna after more than a year of negotiations between Iran and six world powers: the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China and Russia.

Obama says the accord cuts off every path to a nuclear weapon for Iran, which would shut down about two-thirds of its centrifuges used to enrich uranium and dispose of 98 percent of its stockpile of the substance.

Republicans have criticized the deal as too lenient. Iran wouldn't have to destroy its centrifuges and would have about three weeks' notice before inspections of undeclared nuclear sites. After 10 years, Iran could increase its uranium enrichment. Many other restrictions on its nuclear activities would end after 15 years, though some inspections would continue in perpetuity.

The White House is preparing for the likelihood that lawmakers will vote against the deal next month and is focusing its lobbying efforts on getting enough Democrats to sustain a presidential veto. Only one chamber of Congress is needed to sustain a veto and keep the deal in place.

Information for this article was contributed by Julie Pace, Josh Lederman, Donna Cassata and Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press; by Margaret Talev, Toluse Olorunnipa, Calev Ben-David, Jonathan Ferziger, Billy House and Justin Sink of Bloomberg News; and by Sarah D. Wire of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

A Section on 08/06/2015

Upcoming Events