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Netanyahu Appeals to American Jews to Oppose Iran Nuclear Deal Obama Begins Campaign in Congress for Iran Nuclear Deal
(about 3 hours later)
WASHINGTON — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel intensified his campaign against the nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers on Tuesday, denouncing it as a fatally flawed and dangerous accord and charging that proponents are trying to muzzle criticism of it with deceitful claims. WASHINGTON — President Obama is rolling out a campaign of private entreaties and public advocacy over the next several weeks to build support in Congress for the nuclear deal with Iran, an effort to counter a well-financed onslaught from critics who have promised to use a monthlong congressional recess to pressure lawmakers to oppose the accord.
“As a result of this deal, there will be more terrorism, there will be more attacks, and more people will die,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a webcast viewed by thousands of American Jews. “This is a very dangerous deal, and it threatens all of us.” In a speech at American University in Washington on Wednesday, Mr. Obama will seek to explain and defend the international agreement reached last month, which would lift some sanctions in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon.
In a speech and brief question-and-answer session organized by the Jewish Federations of North America, Mr. Netanyahu said his differences with President Obama over the agreement had “never been personal,” and asserted that the alliance between the United States and Israel was strong enough to weather the bitter dispute. But he also angrily rejected Mr. Obama’s claims about the accord, condemning as “utterly false” the president’s often-cited argument that opponents have no alternative other than war for reining in Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Mr. Obama, who campaigned for the presidency in 2008 promising to end wars in the Middle East, will use the speech to frame Congress’s choice as the most consequential foreign policy decision since the vote to go to war in Iraq, and he will say the deal’s opponents are the same people who supported that military conflict.
Supporters of the deal “try to stifle serious debate,” Mr. Netanyahu said, “with false claims and efforts to delegitimize criticism.” He said he wanted to rebut the distortions and “disinformation” being spread about the deal. “He will make the case that this should not even be a close call,” a White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a preview of Mr. Obama’s message. The president will also say that it would be a “historic mistake to squander this opportunity — removing constraints on the Iranian program, unraveling the sanctions regime and damaging American credibility.”
“I don’t oppose this deal because I want war, I oppose this deal because I want to prevent war, and this deal will bring war,” he said during the address, which organizers said drew more than 10,000 viewers or listeners online. Anticipating a month of heavy lobbying and television advertising by opponents, led by the pro-Israel group Aipac, the president and top members of his team are leaning on Democrats to publicly declare their backing for the agreement before they leave Washington to face their constituents.
The Israeli prime minister’s latest plea to American Jews to oppose the agreement came as Mr. Obama and his administration increased their efforts to build support for it in anticipation of a vote by Congress in the coming months. The president is scheduled to meet Tuesday at the White House with about 20 leaders of Jewish groups, his first such in-person session since the deal was finalized last month. Mr. Obama, who will decamp to Martha’s Vineyard this weekend for his own two-week summer vacation, will have limited personal contact with wavering lawmakers, but his team is under strict instructions to make the president and other senior administration officials available to any skeptic with an unanswered question or concern about the deal. “Anyone who wants a phone call will get one,” one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to outline internal strategy.
The White House on Tuesday posted a copy of the 159-page nuclear agreement on the social media site Medium, annotated with comments from Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz, and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, who explain and defend key elements. Officials said that Mr. Obama’s address on Wednesday would be followed by a series of news media interviews that will be shown next week. And the administration plans to dispatch cabinet members, including Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz, the nuclear physicist who helped negotiate the accord, to travel the country outlining its provisions. Mr. Moniz will appear on Friday at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, administration officials said.
“It’s important that everyone understands exactly what’s in this deal and how it’ll work,” the White House wrote in a preface to the agreement. The first comment is from Mr. Kerry, who set the stage for the deal by recalling his service during the Vietnam War. “We are confident that a sizable number of members of Congress will put politics aside and focus on what they believe is in the best interest of the United States and our national security, and if they do, a substantial number of those who follow that path will be supportive of the agreement,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary. “There’s no denying that there is intense political pressure on both sides of this agreement,” he continued, adding that officials were hoping that lawmakers would “focus on the specific terms of the agreement.”
“And I learned in war the price that is paid when diplomacy fails,” Mr. Kerry wrote. The effort gained some momentum Tuesday, as three closely watched Democratic senators — Barbara Boxer of California, Tim Kaine of Virginia and Bill Nelson of Florida — declared their backing, along with a handful of House Democrats. Mr. Obama’s team is working with Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader, to build support to potentially sustain a presidential veto of legislation rejecting the accord.
In the webcast, Mr. Netanyahu argued that the agreement does not block Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, but actually paves the country’s path to a bomb. If it complied with the terms, he said, Iran could quickly develop nuclear weapons after 15 years at the most — “the blink of an eye.” If Iran cheats as it is likely to do, he said, world powers could easily fail to detect its moves to secretly develop a nuclear weapon, since the deal allows as many as 24 days to pass before inspectors can gain access to suspicious sites. But some prominent voices, including Representative Steve Israel of New York, the highest-ranking Jewish Democrat in the House; Nita Lowey, also of New York; and Ted Deutch of Florida came out against the agreement.
“You can flush a lot of nuclear meth down the toilet in 24 days,” Mr. Netanyahu said, comparing the arrangement to allowing a drug dealer 24 days’ notice before raiding his laboratory. “How can you block what you don’t know?” “After a decade in public life working to stop Iran from ever acquiring nuclear weapons, I cannot support a deal giving Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief — in return for letting it maintain an advanced nuclear program and the infrastructure of a threshold nuclear state,” Mr. Deutch, the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East, wrote in The Sun Sentinel.
And he said the sanctions relief Iran would receive as part of the agreement amounted to a “cash jackpot” it would use to fund terrorism around the region and the world. Congress, which will return from its break Sept. 8, has until Sept. 17 to vote on a resolution supporting or rejecting the accord.
Public opinion on the agreement has been in flux in recent weeks, with some polls indicating majorities or pluralities supporting it and others showing more opposition. J Street, a pro-Israel group that supports the deal and has announced a $2 million advertising campaign, found that 60 percent of American Jews supported the agreement.
But Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster who is a consultant to Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, an Aipac-funded group that is planning to spend more than $25 million on advertising in the coming weeks, said that the more people knew about the deal, “the more likely they are to disapprove of it.”
“The intensity is clearly on the opposition side,” he said, “so the right play is to harness that with grass-roots mobilization.”
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel told thousands of American Jews in a webcast that the agreement was fatally flawed and dangerous, charging that proponents were trying to muzzle criticism of it with deceitful claims. “As a result of this deal, there will be more terrorism, there will be more attacks, and more people will die,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
He also angrily rejected Mr. Obama’s claims about the accord, particularly his argument that its opponents have no alternative other than war for reining in Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions, calling it “utterly false.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s latest impassioned plea to American Jews came as Mr. Obama huddled privately at the White House with about 20 leaders of Jewish groups to try to allay concerns about the deal, his first such in-person session since the deal was completed.
The White House also posted a copy of the 159-page agreement on the website Medium, annotated with comments from Secretary of State John Kerry, Mr. Moniz and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, which explain and advocate key elements.
“It’s important that everyone understands exactly what’s in this deal and how it’ll work,” the White House said in a preface to the post. The first comment is from Mr. Kerry, who sets the stage for the deal by recalling his service during the Vietnam War, just after he left college.
“I learned in war the price that is paid when diplomacy fails,” Mr. Kerry wrote.