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WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday urged lawmakers to support the nuclear deal reached with Iran, saying that failure to put it into effect would increase the likelihood of war in the Middle East and accelerate a nuclear arms race in the region that would threaten the safety of the United States.
WASHINGTON — President Obama eagerly took on critics of the Iran nuclear deal on Wednesday, inviting question after question on an agreement he suggested that many of his political adversaries had not even read.
“That’s the choice that we face,” Mr. Obama said in opening comments at a news conference in the East Room of the White House. “If we don’t choose wisely, I believe future generations will judge us harshly, for letting this moment slip away.”
Mr. Obama used a formal East Room news conference to begin what White House officials said would be an aggressive effort by the president and his top advisers over the next 60 days to combat critics in both parties and to sell the Iran deal to members of Congress, the public and allies in the region.
Just one day after announcing the culmination of his yearslong effort to use diplomacy to restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Mr. Obama said he expected a “robust debate” in Congress and among the American people. But he said he saw no alternative to the deal that would prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
While Mr. Obama is expected to win enough votes to sustain a veto of any legislation rejecting the deal, his goal over the next two months is to persuade enough Democrats to support the accord so that he can paint opponents as driven by politics rather than diplomacy.
“Without a deal, we risk even more war in the Middle East,” he said, adding that other countries in the region would feel compelled to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs. “This deal is our best means of assuring that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon,” he said. “From the start, that has been my No. 1 priority.”
He appeared to relish the fight as he adopted a bring-it-on demeanor and invited reporters to ask him more about the deal.
Mr. Obama said he hoped the agreement would pave the way to a more constructive relationship with Iran, but he strongly rejected the idea that the deal deserved to be opposed because it fails to address Iran’s support for terrorism or its destabilizing activities in the Middle East.
“Have we exhausted Iran questions here?” he asked at one point. “I think there’s a helicopter that’s coming, but I really am enjoying this Iran debate.”
He then disregarded a prepared list of reporters to call on and, like a boxer beckoning someone to throw a punch, asked for more questions on Iran from the room.
“I just want to make sure that we’re not leaving any stones unturned here,” he said. As Mr. Obama spoke, his critics continued to hammer against it. Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, one of the deal’s most ardent critics, said it represented a “nuclear agreement with an outlaw regime” and predicted that “the American people will repudiate this deal and Congress will kill the deal with a veto-proof majority.”
Most American Jewish groups were also mobilizing strongly against the accord. The pro-Israel lobby Aipac denounced the deal as one that “would facilitate rather than prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and would further entrench and empower the leading state sponsor of terror.”
“Proponents of the proposed agreement will argue that the only alternative to this agreement is military conflict,” Aipac said in a statement calling on Congress to reject the deal and to insist on a better one. “In fact, the reverse is true. A bad agreement such as this will invite instability and nuclear proliferation. It will embolden Iran and may encourage regional conflict.”
The Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America issued a joint statement saying they had scrutinized the pact and found it “seriously wanting,” calling the inspection regime insufficient and the billions of dollars in sanctions for relief for Iran unacceptable. They said they would be mobilizing rabbis and synagogues across the nation to oppose the measure and urge lawmakers to reject it.
In the past, Mr. Obama has often appeared defensive or defeated as he faced questions about the failure of his health care website or other foreign policy challenges. But in this case he avidly raised and dismissed many objections without even being asked. For those who argue that the administration could have forced the Iranians to agree to a deal that would leave Iran with no nuclear capacity, “there is nobody who thinks that Iran would or could ever accept that,” he said.
And for those who say that the current sanctions on Iran are better than the negotiated deal, Mr. Obama said that without a diplomatic agreement the present sanctions regime would break down.
“Without a deal, the international sanctions regime will unravel with little ability to reimpose them,” he said.
The president did concede that the people of Israel — where the deal has been met with hostility and skepticism from across the political spectrum — have “legitimate concerns” about whether Iran emerges with a greater ability to back terrorism and disrupt its neighbors.
“You have a large country, with a significant military, that has proclaimed that Israel shouldn’t exist, that has denied the Holocaust, that has financed Hezbollah,” Mr. Obama said, speaking of Iran. “There are very good reasons why Israelis are nervous about Iran’s position in the world, generally.”
But Mr. Obama insisted that “those threats are compounded if Iran gets a nuclear weapon.”
With a better deal impossible, Mr. Obama said that the only viable alternative to the negotiated settlement his administration had presented was war. And he challenged critics of the deal to acknowledge that what they really wanted was a military solution.
“And if the alternative is that we should bring Iran to heel through military force, then those critics should say so, and that will be an honest debate,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Obama said he hoped the agreement would pave the way to a more constructive relationship with Iran. But he rejected the idea that the deal deserved to be opposed because it failed to address Iran’s support for terrorism or its destabilizing activities in the Middle East.
“My hope is that building on this deal, we can continue to have conversations with Iran that incentivizes them to behave differently in the region, to be less aggressive, less hostile, more cooperative,” Mr. Obama said. “But we’re not counting on it.”
“My hope is that building on this deal, we can continue to have conversations with Iran that incentivizes them to behave differently in the region, to be less aggressive, less hostile, more cooperative,” Mr. Obama said. “But we’re not counting on it.”
The agreement, he said, “solves one particular problem,” which is the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapon.
The agreement, he said, “solves one particular problem,” which is the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapon.
“It’ll be a lot easier for us to check Iran’s nefarious activities, to push back against the other areas where they operate contrary to our interests or our allies’ interests if they don’t have a bomb,” he said.
He finally said he had to go, but promised to return to the subject of the Iran deal.
The president directly addressed critics who said the deal threatened Israel, saying that America’s closest ally in the Middle East has “legitimate concerns” about whether Iran emerges with a greater ability to back terrorism and disrupt its neighbors.
“I think we’ve hit the big themes, but I — but I promise you I will — I will address this again, all right?” he said. “I suspect this is not the last that we’ve heard of this debate.”
“You have a large country, with a significant military, that has proclaimed that Israel shouldn’t exist, that has denied the Holocaust, that has financed Hezbollah,” Mr. Obama said. “There are very good reasons why Israelis are nervous about Iran’s position in the world, generally.”
But Mr. Obama insisted that “those threats are compounded if Iran gets a nuclear weapon” and he chastised the critics of the deal — including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and Republicans in Congress — for ignoring the facts of the deal and for failing to offer a viable alternative.
“I’m hearing a lot of talking points being repeated,” Mr. Obama said. “What I haven’t heard is what is your preferred alternative?”
“My hope is that everyone in Congress also evaluates this agreement based on the facts,” he added, “not on politics. Not on posturing. Not on the fact that this is a deal that I bring to Congress, as opposed to a Republican president. Not based on lobbying.”
Taking on one of the prime criticisms of the deal, Mr. Obama defended the inspection regime that underlies it, insisting that despite the fact that it could take up to 24 days for international inspectors to gain access to sites where they feared Iran might be trying to covertly develop a weapon, the system was the most vigorous ever negotiated.
“The nature of nuclear programs and facilities is such, this is not something you hide in a closet, this is not something you put on a dolly and wheel off somewhere,” Mr. Obama said. He noted that the agreement builds in a one-year “breakout time” it would take Iran to build a weapon, and it allows sanctions to be reimposed immediately.
Critics of the inspection and verification regime are really arguing that no system would be sufficient to prevent Iran from getting a weapon, Mr. Obama said. “What you’re really saying is that you’ve got to apply military force to guarantee that they can’t have a nuclear program,” he said.
In responding to a question about how the Iran deal fits in with his long-term goals for the Middle East, Mr. Obama described a set of modest achievements that he hopes to be able to pass on to the next president. He said that he hoped the United States would be “on track” to defeating the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and that the extremist group is “more contained” than it is now. He said he hoped to have “jump-started” a process to resolve the civil war in Syria.”
“If we’ve done those things, then the problems of the Middle East will not be solved,” he conceded. And he said the region’s long-term problems will have to be solved by the people who live there. But he added that he hoped to “provide that next president at least that foundation for continued progress.”
Mr. Obama acknowledged that the United States and Iran, which controls Shiite forces that are adversaries of the Islamic State, which is Sunni, have some common goals in Iraq, although he said the United States military, which is leading the international effort to combat the group, would not seek to collaborate officially with Iran in that fight.
“I do not foresee a formal set of agreements with Iran in terms of how we’re conducting our counter-ISIL campaign,” he said, using an acronym for the group, also known as ISIS. “But clearly Iran has influence in Iraq.”
Some of Iran’s activities there are helpful, he said, while “some are less legitimate, where you see Iran financing Shiite militias that in the past have killed American soldiers, and in the future may carry out atrocities when they move into Sunni areas.”
Where possible, the president said, American officials would work with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq to “deconflict” their efforts with those of Iran’s, and inform him when they had concerns about Iran’s actions. He said he did not want a situation in which United States troops are “looking over their shoulder” because they are operating alongside Iranian-backed groups that have targeted Americans.
Mr. Obama, who was so eager to take on criticisms of the Iran agreement that he broke from convention at one point to ask if there were any unanswered questions on it, became angry at one point when asked to respond to the notion that he had been “content” to close the deal without ensuring the freedom of Americans imprisoned in Iran.
“That’s nonsense, you should know better,” he said after a long pause, glaring. “I’ve met with the families of some of those folks. Nobody’s ‘content.’ ”
He said tying a nuclear agreement to freeing American prisoners would have prompted the Iranians to seek additional concessions in the talks, and made it “much more difficult for us to walk away.”
He said American officials were “working every single day” to secure the prisoners’ release, and would not stop until they had succeeded.
