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WASHINGTON — Republican leaders in Congress said Tuesday that they were prepared to reject the Iran nuclear deal, while many Democrats remained skeptical but willing to hear out President Obama’s pitch.
WASHINGTON — Before Congress had even begun its official review, Republican leaders vowed Tuesday to kill President Obama’s nuclear accord with Iran, setting up a fierce fight to save the president’s signature diplomatic achievement.
Under the terms of legislation passed in May, Congress has 60 days to scrutinize the accord between Iran and the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany, and then to vote to accept or reject it — or to do nothing. The president can veto any resolution of disapproval. Congress needs a two-thirds majority in each house to override the veto, so to put the deal into force, Mr. Obama only needs one-third of one of the houses to stand with him.
Congress will have 60 days to review the deal, once all documents have been sent to the Capitol, after which it can pass a resolution of approval, pass one of disapproval or do nothing. Mr. Obama would veto a resolution of disapproval, and the opponents could derail the agreement only if they could rally the required two-thirds vote of Congress to override his action.
But even potential supporters say the spectacle of a majority of Congress rejecting such a delicate international accord could do real damage.
“I want to go through this process and make sure we fully understand what we’re voting on,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “In the end, those who believe this truly is going to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon will vote for it. Those who believe that is not the case, and the world is not going to be safer — in some ways it may pave the way for them to get a nuclear weapon — will vote against it.”
“If I were in their shoes and I was responsible for this, I would want to win over a majority of the American people and convince them the deal is in their interest,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Who wants their legacy to be a deal that is barely approved by the narrowest of margins and is opposed by the majority of Congress? That would indicate a depth of division that would put the whole venture into question.”
Mr. Corker, the chief author of the review act, strongly implied that he was in the latter camp.
At the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Obama began what promises to be an arduous process of pitching the historic agreement to Congress even as he was announcing its outlines. He said it was based on strict verification requirements that would leave nothing to chance when it came to Iran’s compliance and to thwarting its means of obtaining a weapon.
Republican opposition to diplomatic overtures dates at least to President Richard M. Nixon’s visit to China. Even President Ronald Reagan faced a backlash after raising the prospects of deep nuclear arms reductions after meeting Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Saying he welcomed congressional scrutiny, the president offered “extensive briefings” from members of his administration on the deal, and threatened to veto any effort by Congress to block it. But he also previewed an overarching theme that senior officials and those close to the White House cite as a key component of their argument for the pact.
For the White House, selling the deal to Congress, including doubters in the president’s own party, may prove almost as difficult as reaching agreement with Iran.
“Consider what happens in a world without this deal,” Mr. Obama said, arguing that without an accord there would be “no lasting constraints on Iran’s nuclear program,” prompting other countries in the area to race for a weapon and “threatening a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region in the world.”
Mr. Obama defended the deal in a lengthy interview with the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, and scheduled a formal news conference at the White House on Wednesday to address questions about it, while Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is scheduled to meet with House Democrats on Capitol Hill to build support among lawmakers.
The House Foreign Relations Committee will open a review of the deal on Tuesday with hearings before the details are widely known. The committee’s chairman, Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California, expressed his concerns in an interview on Monday, as a deal appeared imminent.
There was no similar effort to assuage Republicans, whose repudiation of the Iran deal was a blow not only to Mr. Obama but also to conservative leaders the party usually backs, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.
“We have given up not just all the leverage we had on Iran with the sanctions. We’ve also sent a message of weakness in the way this has been handled,” he said.
“In the next couple of months, the international community is going to be focused on Congress. I got that,” Mr. Corker said in an interview. “I understand the position we’re in.”
Administration officials argued on Tuesday that a decision by the United States to walk away from the agreement would in essence free Iran from crippling sanctions, including limits on oil sales, that European leaders and those from China, India, South Korea and Japan agreed to impose, in some cases at great economic cost to their countries.
After decades of war in the Middle East, it is unclear whether such opposition will reflect broad public opinion or a narrow, passionate core of hawkish conservatives and pro-Israel Democrats.
“If, having gotten this deal, we then kill it, it is hard to see why those countries would then go back along with additional sanctions,” one senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the strategy behind the agreement. “A vote to kill this deal could potentially be a vote to kill the sanctions regime.”
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, expressed support for the deal both publicly and behind closed doors with congressional Democrats.
Mr. Obama and White House aides have already begun the wooing. At a White House reception last week for Senate Democrats, Mr. Obama spoke at length about the deal’s importance to his legacy, trying hard to assure his own party that he would not rush into an accord just to have the accomplishment.
“This is an important step in putting the lid on Iran’s nuclear program,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters during a visit with Democrats at the Capitol. All Republican presidential contenders who offered an opinion said they strongly opposed the deal.
“My foreign policy legacy in this area will be judged on whether or not the deal works, not just over the next 18 months but over many years,” Mr. Coons said Mr. Obama had told the gathering. “If I put together a deal that fails to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, that would be part of my legacy as well,” the president added, according to Mr. Coons.
On Iran, the bellicose position may be the easiest one politically. Republicans saw an opportunity to drive a wedge between Democratic politicians and the Jewish voters who traditionally support them. One senior House Democrat said party leaders were trying to show that a presidential veto would be safe from an override, but they were struggling to find a third of the House willing to publicly state support for the deal.
The White House chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, met last week with the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, and its ranking Democrat, Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, to hear their concerns, Mr. Cardin said. After some initial reluctance to share classified information on the talks, the White House has become far more forthcoming, Mr. Cardin added.
In talks with foreign policy analysts, Jewish groups and other prominent stakeholders whose support or opposition could be pivotal, White House nuclear experts and State Department officials argued that the deal would place strict, verifiable limits on Iran’s nuclear program and cut off Iran’s paths to a nuclear weapon.
“There are people who have already made up their minds, no question about that, and I think that’s unfortunate,” Mr. Cardin said. “But at this point, a majority of Congress believes we have to objectively review what’s in the agreement before we decide what course we’re going to take.”
“We have cut off every pathway for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Obama said in the interview.
Mr. Cardin said the Iran review, while proceeding in Congress initially over the White House’s objections, probably played to the West’s advantage. Under the terms of the law that established the review, Congress has 30 days to examine the agreement before sanctions can be lifted on Iran. But because Congress will be in its August recess when that review period ends, the deal effectively has an additional month of public scrutiny before Congress can decide its actions.
Mr. Obama said he anticipated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel would lobby Congress to reject the deal. He added that at some point he was prepared to discuss additional security aid that the United States could offer Israel to allay its concerns.
Mr. Cardin said the Iranians thought they could force negotiators to accept terms more favorable to Tehran to avoid that extra 30-day period. But American negotiators in the end let that deadline slip.
Mr. Netanyahu “perhaps thinks he can further influence the congressional debate, and I’m confident we’re going to be able to uphold this deal and implement it without Congress preventing that,” Mr. Obama said in the interview.
“Iran thought they’d blink at the last minute, and they didn’t,” he said.
But critics were also preparing a large-scale mobilization during the August congressional recess, when lawmakers are in their home states and districts, to stoke opposition to the agreement and agitate for Congress to block it, just as supporters of the president were preparing their own counteroffensive.
White House officials must now decide whether the president should try to win over a majority of Congress, including hostile Republicans, or focus on shoring up a Democratic base to sustain a veto. Mr. Royce said he thought the strategy to protect the veto was already in play.
Without waiting for the details, Republicans lined up to blast the deal, from presidential candidates to congressional leaders to back benchers. Jeb Bush evoked Nazism and denounced “appeasement.” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, another Republican White House hopeful, promised that the next president would undo it.
“I don’t see them convincing skeptical Democrats this is a good agreement. I see them pressuring Democrats to go along,” he said.
“We’ll do everything we can to stop it,” Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio vowed.
Democrats see a broader strategy. Mr. Coons said earlier this summer that he had told administration officials he did not just want political reassurances. He was trained as a chemist, and he said he had wanted to hear the science backing the administration’s contention that a deal could stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. White House officials then arranged a classified briefing with Ernest J. Moniz, the energy secretary; a Nobel Laureate; and three nuclear weapons scientists.
White House officials focused on making as strong a case as they could for the deal — then scrounging together enough votes to make sure it survives.
“It was substantively reassuring,” Mr. Coons said.
Representative Brad Sherman, Democrat of California and an opponent of the deal, said Washington knew exactly how the issue would play out. “We will have a resolution of disapproval,” he said during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the deal on Tuesday. “It’ll pass. It will be vetoed. The veto will be sustained. And we will get the deal in the weakest, most pitiful way possible.”
Mr. Cardin added, “They will be lobbying hard, not just with Congress but with the American people.”
Even potential supporters say the spectacle of a majority of Congress rejecting such a delicate accord could be damaging.
Several left-leaning groups, including many of the antiwar activists who helped propel Mr. Obama into the White House, said on Tuesday that they would be working aggressively to defend the deal.
“Who wants their legacy to be a deal that is barely approved by the narrowest of margins and is opposed by the majority of Congress?” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “That would indicate a depth of division that would put the whole venture into question.”
“The diplomatic negotiations between the United States and five world powers have yielded a strong, verifiable deal with Iran,” said Anna Galland, the executive director of MoveOn.Org Civic Action.
Mr. Obama and his aides have already begun the wooing. At a White House reception last week for Senate Democrats, Mr. Coons said Mr. Obama spoke at length about the Iran deal’s importance to his legacy, trying hard to assure his own party that he would not rush into an accord just to have the accomplishment.
The group called the agreement “a historic foreign policy success for the Obama administration,” and said it was urging all members of Congress to back it.
Still, White House officials were bracing for difficult questions about the implications of the agreement, including what happens after the strictest limitations phase out after 10 years and how to address what Iran may do with the money — at least $100 billion in sanctions relief — to which they will gain access through complying with the deal.
“Persuading senators and representatives to do so will be MoveOn members’ top priority over the next 60 days,” Ms. Galland added.
The White House lined up its allies, including liberal and antiwar groups, to weigh in strongly in favor of the deal. Many did so on Tuesday, promising national campaigns to defend a deal they called the only alternative to endless war in the Middle East.
Win Without War, a coalition of national groups, said it too was launching a “national campaign” in favor of the agreement.
White House officials now must decide whether Mr. Obama should try to win over a majority of Congress, including hostile Republicans, or focus on shoring up a Democratic base to sustain a veto. Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he saw the veto strategy already in play.
“This is a good deal and a historic opportunity to win without war,” Stephen Miles, the group’s advocacy director, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, congressional opponents of any deal with Iran will stop at nothing to scuttle this agreement and put our nation on the path to yet another war in the Middle East. We have seen this movie before and we know how it ends. We will not stand idly by while those who pushed for war with Iraq try to push us into war with Iran.”
“I don’t see them convincing skeptical Democrats this is a good agreement,” he said. “I see them pressuring Democrats to go along.”
Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group, said his organization was likely to support the deal “because the primary interest of the United States and Israel was to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and that is the outcome of this deal.”
But the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel group known as Aipac that is likely to campaign against the deal, said it was “deeply concerned” about the contents.
In a statement, the group said it feared the agreement had fallen short of “critical requirements” it had insisted upon for a “good deal,” which included “anytime, anywhere” inspections of Iranian nuclear sites and a duration of multiple decades.
“We are deeply concerned based on initial reports that this proposed agreement may not meet these requirements, and thereby would fail to block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon and would further entrench and empower the leading state sponsor of terror,” Aipac said.
