Obama pitches Iran nuclear deal as support looks ‘squishy’

President Obama knows his bully pulpit isn’t enough to sell the Iran deal. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) 

President Obama, worried that support for his historic nuclear deal with Iran is going “squishy,” will plead with wavering congressional Democrats and a skeptical public on Wednesday not to kill what would be his signature second-term foreign policy achievement.

In a speech at American University in Washington, Obama will strive to counter an all-out blitz against the agreement by Republicans and Israel in a campaign that seems to be paying off as opinion polls suggest slipping support for the pact.

The president previewed some of his arguments last week in an unusual conference call with a large number of progressive groups, asking them to stiffen the spine of Democrats who, he said, might be going limp in the face of the well-funded push to kill the accord.

“I’m meeting these members of Congress and they don’t really buy the arguments of the opponents, but I can tell when they start gettin’ squishy,” Obama said on the call. “They start getting squishy because they’re feeling political heat. And you guys have to counteract that.”

Obama, who won the White House in large part thanks to public opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, also made clear he hopes progressive anger at that conflict hasn’t grown dull.

“In the absence of your voices, you’re going to see the same array of forces that got us into the Iraq war leading to a situation in which we forego a historic opportunity and we are back on the path of potential military conflict,” Obama warned on Thursday’s conference call.

The speech on Wednesday will be just one more high-profile piece of a relentless White House push to keep Congress from killing the deal. A few hours after Obama speaks, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, a nuclear physicist, will travel to Capitol Hill for the latest all-senators briefing on the agreement. Obama has telephoned wavering lawmakers. So have Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the Iran nuclear deal on July 29. With him is Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Facing fierce opposition to the deal from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the president has also worked to enlist Jewish groups, including donors, and met Tuesday with a group of Jewish leaders.

Public opinion polls have been a mixed bag. The public appears sharply divided, with sizable and growing opposition, but with large numbers of Americans still apparently in the persuadable column.

The one group most clearly left out of the administration’s courtship is congressional Republicans, who appear to be in lockstep opposition to the agreement.

“We have concluded that we are not going to spend a whole lot of time trying to persuade them,” Obama press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters last week.

Congress has entered a 60-day review of the deal, at the end of which lawmakers can vote to approve of disapprove of it. The White House has promised that Obama will veto a resolution of disapproval. Lawmakers would need to rally two-thirds of Congress to override the president — something they cannot do if Democrats hold together.

House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said last week that she is confident the president’s party can hold the line — for now. “I feel confident — I wish it (the vote) were now.”

Earnest on Monday cited “a substantial amount of confidence in our ability to sustain a veto, at least in the House” but emphasized that “we clearly are not taking any of those votes for granted.”

On the other side, Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., who co-chairs the House Republican Israel Caucus, announced Monday that he had secured the votes to pass a resolution of disapproval, which would make it impossible to implement the deal. And Rep. Nita Lowey, an influential Democrat, came out against the agreement.

Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., speaks on Capitol Hill. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Still, the White House has notched some victories. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, announced Monday he would support the deal. Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Mich., the longest-serving Jewish member of Congress, had already done so. Several Democratic senators, including Tim Kaine of Virginia, Barbara Boxer of California and Bill Nelson of Florida came out in favor on Tuesday.

On the conference call, Obama seemed to be reliving August 2009, when lawmakers headed home to a firestorm of Tea Party anger at Obamacare and returned shell-shocked to Washington.

The White House declined to list the organizations that took part in the unusual call. But it was a who’s who of left-of-center groups, including Obama’s Organizing for Action advocacy group, the Truman National Security Project, the Ploughshares Fund, the Center for American Progress, CREDO Action and Win Without War.

The president sounded equal parts tired and frustrated as he walked his audience through the technical arguments in favor of the agreement, which gives Iran relief from crippling economic sanctions in return for steps designed to ensure that it cannot produce a nuclear weapon. Again and again, he brought up Iraq.

“One of the frustrations that I’ve always had about the run-up to the Iraq War was that everybody got really loud and really active after it was too late as opposed to on the front end,” he said. “You guys have to get more active, and loud, and involved and informed, and start making your voices heard with respect to members of Congress.”

Opposition to the deal is coming from “some of the same columnists and former administration officials that were responsible for us getting into the Iraq war and were making these exact same claims back in 2002 or 2003 with respect to Iraq,” he said.

On one level, it’s a logical argument for the White House to make. The public looks sharply divided on the Iran deal and gives Obama approval ratings hovering a bit below 50 percent. The White House doesn’t really feel the need to avoid alienating Republicans. And some Congressional Democrats privately tell Yahoo News that they really don’t want the accord to live or die based on a vote that may resemble a referendum on Obama in his seventh year in office.

But the argument is also slightly tricky. Israel did not take a public position on the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, but senior U.S. officials have said that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government privately lobbied against it — in part because Iraq served as a bulwark against Iran. Today, Netanyahu fiercely opposes the deal, as does the potent American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), one of several pro-Israel groups that is flying members of Congress to Israel over the August break for what is sure to be an all-out recruiting pitch.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel would not be bound by the nuclear deal between world powers and Iran. (Photo: Ammar Awad/Reuters)

Obama had always planned to characterize a vote against the deal as a vote for war, but it’s not clear that opposition to the Iraq War has anything like the political power it had when it lifted him to the presidency.

And Obama has never regarded a vote for the Iraq War as disqualifying. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner who served as Obama’s first-term secretary of state, voted in favor of the war as senator from New York. Vice President Joe Biden, then a senator from Delaware, did too. Secretary of State John Kerry, then representing Massachusetts in the Senate, did as well.

But casting the Iran debate in terms drawn from his history-making first run for the White House and from what he considers a signal foreign policy legacy showcases the agreement’s importance to Obama. In terms of politics and policy, it’s as complex and potentially far-reaching as Obamacare. In terms of his attachment to it, it resembles his deeply personal push for restrictions on gun ownership after the massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, a campaign in which enough Democrats deserted their party’s leader that he lost.

So he and Biden have joined Kerry, Moniz and other officials in an all-out effort to keep Democrats informed and in line.

Last Wednesday, Obama hosted House Democrats at the White House for a “working reception” — an opportunity for him to take their questions and court their support. A series of votes cut the event short and called the lawmakers back to the Capitol. Obama unexpectedly told the departing representatives that they were free to come back after the votes. About 20 did, and Obama led the group into the Blue Room in the residence section of the White House, where they could sit and talk more informally. They plugged their cellphones into outlets in that room, moved their chairs around, and dug into the issue again.

As of Friday, Obama had met not quite 100 representatives and senators since the deal was announced, aides said. Kerry, Moniz and other key administration players have testified in public hearings in the House and Senate, while members of both chambers have had the opportunity to attend classified briefings. Cabinet members have met with congressional Democrats and Republicans — more than 175 in all.

Biden had discussed the deal on the phone with more than a dozen lawmakers. He met with House Democrats on July 15, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats one day later. He took part in Wednesday’s “working reception.” On Thursday morning, he hosted a breakfast meeting with House Democrats.

Secretary of State John Kerry testifies on Capitol Hill about the Iran pact on July 28. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)

House Democrats have long been thought to be the key to sustaining Obama’s veto. About 150 of them signed a letter earlier this year expressing support for the negotiations — enough to kill an attempt to override the president. But two Senate Democratic sources told Yahoo News on Thursday that they have not given up on smothering opposition to the deal earlier in the process. “Decent chance we’ll have 40,” one aide said, referring to the number of votes needed to filibuster a resolution of disapproval. That claim draws a skeptical response from Obama aides, but it shows that the outcome of the coming fight is uncertain.

Those few senators who are still on the fence are keeping their thoughts and inclinations to themselves, even as they’re being courted, cajoled or threatened by advocates on both sides.

One of the most-watched members of Congress is Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, a Jewish politician with strong ties to pro-Israel groups and usually a top Obama ally.

“He has a lot of questions, and he’s had a lot of meetings with administration folks and outside experts,” was the most one of his aides would say, and would not speak on the record about the senator’s thinking because of the ongoing nature of his deliberation process.

Other publicly undecided Democrats include Michael Bennet of Colorado, who will be up for reelection in November 2016 and Ben Cardin of Maryland, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

There will be some symbolic power to giving the speech on Wednesday: It’s the anniversary of the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and, probably not coincidentally, the day before the first formal Republican presidential debate. (It’s also the anniversary of the debut of “Risky Business,” but the White House prefers the symbolism of the treaty.)

But the president sounds acutely aware of the limits of his persuasive powers.

“As big of a bully pulpit as I have, it’s not enough,” he said on the conference call. “I can’t carry it by myself.”