Obama: Iran deal builds on diplomacy that won Cold War

“The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some form of war”, Obama said at American University in Washington.

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 global sanctions.

The Foreign Relations Committee briefing answered few questions about the secret “side deals” attached to the nuclear agreement with Iran, many said.

Strongest agreement Just as in the Iraq war debate, he said, supporters of the deal – which he said was the “strongest non-proliferation agreement ever signed” – were being accused of being “weak” and “appeasers”.

The speech is part of an all-out White House lobbying effort to convince Democratic members of Congress to support the deal in a vote in September.

Therefore, AJC opposes the deal and calls on Members of Congress to do the same.

“Remind them of what is best in us and what we stand for”, he told the audience.

Mr Obama spoke at American University, the same setting where John F Kennedy delivered a landmark June 1963 speech on a nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union, and invoked his predecessor repeatedly.

More than at anytime in his presidency, Obama channeled his disdain for the thinking that led the U.S.to invade Iraq in 2003, an event on which the young Democratic presidential candidate based a larger critique about stunted groupthink in American politics.

“By invoking JFK at A.U, he intentionally wants this to be seen as his singular achievement of peace over war”, said Hooman Majd, a New York-based Iran expert.

“This deal is also in line with a tradition of American leadership”, Obama said as he announced the Iran accord last month. “It actually paves Iran’s path to the bomb”, which is what he also warned in his address before a joint session of Congress in March.

“I get that people don’t like the choice that the President presents”, Murphy said.

Opponents of the deal say it does not go far enough to ensure that Iran will never be able to develop a nuclear weapon and argue that lifting sanctions on Iran will only empower it to do so. “No one can blame Israelis for having a deep skepticism about any deals with a government like Iran’s”. He added: “There are times when force is necessary” and that time may yet come if Iran does not respect the deal, but not yet.

Obama said that while Iranian hardliners may chant “Death to America” in the streets of Tehran, that’s not the belief of all Iranians. “As president of the United States it would be an abrogation of my constitutional duty to act against my best judgment simply because it causes temporary friction with a dear friend and ally”, he said.

If the deal fails, he argued, “the alternatives to a military option will have been exhausted”, and America will be headed towards “another war in the Middle East” with what he called unpredictable consequences.

Mr Obama acknowledged the concerns of close ally-Israel but was steadfast in telling the country’s Prime Minister that he was wrong to dismiss the agreement. Obama rode to the White House in 2008 on his early, vocal and mostly lonely opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.