Barack Obama criticises opponents of Iran nuclear deal

Barack Obama criticised opponents of the nuclear agreement with Iran yesterday, accusing them of using many of the same arguments that had been made to support the invasion of Iraq.

In a speech aimed partly at wavering Democratic members of Congress, the US president said that the campaign against the Iran deal reflected the "mindset" that had led to the Iraq war.

"Many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now arguing the case against the Iran nuclear deal," he said in a speech at American University in Washington.

The likely result of Congress rejecting the Iran deal would be “another war in the Middle East”. “The choice we face is between diplomacy and some form of war,” he 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”.

Mr Obama, whose 2008 presidential campaign was energised by his opposition to the Iraq war, said that at the time he argued the US needed to “end the mindset that got us there in the first place”. The Iraq war had been pushed by people who “prefer military action over diplomacy, prefer unilateral US action over the painstaking work of building an international consensus”.

By making the explicit link to the Iraq war debate, Mr Obama was trying to convince Democratic members of Congress who have not yet decided their position on the agreement.

Congress has until mid-September to vote on whether it supports or rejects the deal and given the near-unanimous criticism from Republicans, a majority is likely to vote against the agreement.

However, if the administration can win the backing of a significant number of congressional Democrats, it will secure the one-third of votes needed to sustain a presidential veto.

In recent days, the White House has won the endorsement of a number of prominent Democratic senators, including Chris Murphy from Connecticut, Tim Kaine from Virginia and Bill Nelson from Florida.

However, on Tuesday three prominent Jewish Democrats in the House of Representatives came out against the deal – Ted Deutch of Florida and Steve Israel and Nita Lowey of New York.

Mr Obama’s speech was part of a fierce lobbying campaign by both supporters and opponents of the Iran deal, much of which has focused on Jewish Americans and Jewish members of Congress. On Tuesday, Mr Obama met with leaders from Jewish groups to sell the agreement.

Hours earlier Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the strongest critic of the Iran deal, spoke to more than 10,000 people on a webcast organised by Jewish groups.

“I don’t oppose this deal because I want war. I oppose this deal because I want to prevent war,” he said. “And this deal will bring war that will spark a nuclear arms race in the region and it will feed Iran’s terrorism and aggression that would make war, perhaps the most horrific war of all, far more likely.”

Partisan issue

Mr Netanyahu, who has been criticised for siding too closely with congressional Republicans as he disagrees with the Obama administration, said that Israelis “across the political spectrum” were opposed to the deal. “This is not a partisan issue in Israel,” he said. “It shouldn’t be a partisan issue in the

United States

either.”

In his speech yesterday, Mr Obama said that every government in the world that had commented publicly on the agreement – except Israel – was in support of the deal. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2015)