By PETER BAKER
President Obama strongly defended last week’s preliminary agreement with Iran as a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to curb the spread of nuclear weapons in a dangerous region while reassuring critics that he would keep all options available if Tehran ultimately cheated.
As he sought to sell the tentative deal to skeptics accusing him of giving away too much, Mr. Obama emphasized to Israel that “we’ve got their backs” in the face of Iranian hostility. And he suggested that he could accept some sort of vote in Congress if it did not block his ability to carry out the agreement.
“This is our best bet by far to make sure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with Thomas L. Friedman, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, on Saturday. “What we will be doing even as we enter into this deal is sending a very clear message to the Iranians and to the entire region that if anybody messes with Israel, America will be there.”
In the interview, Mr. Obama provided new details about how international inspectors would try to access suspected covert nuclear sites and the sequence that would lead to sanctions being lifted. Both were major issues in the last days of negotiations in Switzerland, and Mr. Obama’s descriptions differed in key respects from Iran’s interpretations.
That gap suggested the hardest moments in the negotiations may yet be ahead, given that commitments made last week must still be enshrined in a written document signed by all parties by June 30. But Mr. Obama seemed to gain breathing space as Republicans signaled they would give him until then to see what the final deal looks like before directly intervening.
The president’s comments came as the White House embarked on a campaign to sell a preliminary agreement that he hopes will transform security in the Middle East. Under the framework, negotiated with the United States and five other world powers, Iran agreed to scale back its nuclear program significantly for 10 to 15 years and accept intense international inspections. In exchange, the United States and the international community would lift sanctions that have punished the Iranian economy.
While in theory preventing Iran from being able to quickly build a bomb, the agreement leaves it with a nuclear program in place, even if much diminished, drawing criticism from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Republican leaders in Congress as well as skepticism from Arab allies and many Democrats.
“Not a single centrifuge is destroyed,” Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday on “State of the Union” on CNN. “Not a single nuclear facility is shut down, including the underground facilities that they build illicitly. Thousands of centrifuges will keep spinning, enriching uranium. That’s a very bad deal.”
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a possible Republican presidential candidate, said it was “probably the best deal that Barack Obama could get with the Iranians because the Iranians don’t fear” him. “Hillary Clinton could do better,” he added, as could all the Republican candidates “except maybe Rand Paul.”
But Mr. Graham said he would wait to see how the final agreement looked. “I don’t mind giving the administration the time between now and June to put this deal together,” he said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.
In the interview, the president struck a conciliatory note after weeks of open tension with Mr. Netanyahu, a clash that has worried even some White House advisers. Mr. Obama said “I respect” Mr. Netanyahu’s security argument and agreed that Israelis “have every right to be concerned about Iran,” a country that has threatened “to destroy Israel, that has denied the Holocaust, that has expressed venomous anti-Semitic ideas.”
He pledged to redouble support for Israeli security. “I would consider it a failure on my part, a fundamental failure of my presidency, if on my watch, or as a consequence of work that I had done, Israel was rendered more vulnerable,” he said. Similarly, he said he wanted to use a meeting he has called at Camp David to “formalize” security assistance for Arab allies threatened by Iran.
While still resisting what he deemed congressional interference, Mr. Obama reached out to Republicans, calling Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, a “good and decent man.” He did not embrace Mr. Corker’s legislation to give Congress the right to approve or reject the deal. But when asked about a nonbinding vote, the president appeared supportive.
“My hope is that we can find something that allows Congress to express itself but does not encroach on traditional presidential prerogatives and ensures that if in fact we get a good deal that we can go ahead and implement it,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Corker, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” immediately rejected the idea of a nonbinding vote. “There is strong bipartisan support for a binding vote by Congress,” he said. “Look, the president needs to sell this to the American people, and Congress needs to be involved in this way.”
Under the agreement, Iran would limit enrichment of uranium at its Natanz facility to a level useful only for civilian purposes; cut back the number of installed centrifuges by approximately two thirds; convert its Fordo deep-underground enrichment facility into a research center; and modify its Arak heavy-water reactor to render it incapable of producing plutonium for a bomb.
But the structure of international inspections was left vague, as was the timing for lifting sanctions.
Mr. Obama said that inspectors would be able to watch “the entire nuclear chain” and that a “procurement committee” would examine Iranian imports to be sure equipment would be appropriate for peaceful nuclear uses, not a weapon. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, he said, “can go anyplace.”
But the administration has been vague about how to define “anyplace,” and Iran has said it would not be required to allow inspections of military bases.
“Iran could object,” Mr. Obama acknowledged, “but what we have done is to try to design a mechanism whereby once those objections are heard, that is not a final veto that Iran has but in fact some sort of international mechanism will be in place that makes a fair assessment.”
Mr. Obama said sanctions would be lifted only after Iran lives up to its commitments. “There are still details to be worked out,” he said, “but I think that the basic framework calls for Iran to take the steps that it needs to around Fordo, the centrifuges and so forth. At that point, then the U.N. sanctions are suspended.”
He said the United States would “preserve the ability to snap back those sanctions if there is a violation.” And he added that separate sanctions imposed for other reasons, namely Iran’s sponsorship of terrorists and its ballistic missile program, would remain in place.
Administration officials said they envisioned Iran being able to take the required steps within months or a year of an agreement, at which point nuclear-related economic sanctions would be removed. But a major sticking point in the coming months will be the issue of additional sanctions imposed for other reasons.
Mr. Obama said almost nothing about how the United States and its allies would force Iran to answer questions about suspected past work on weapons designs. For years, Iran has blocked inspectors from visiting laboratories where such work is believed to have been conducted.
Mr. Obama presented the nuclear agreement in broader terms. He admitted that he remained uncertain about the intentions of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with whom he has exchanged letters. “He’s a pretty tough read,” Mr. Obama said. The ayatollah’s letters, he said, are filled with “a lot of reminders of what he perceives as past grievances against Iran.”
But Mr. Obama said it was telling that the ayatollah allowed his negotiators to make concessions, and he held out hope that the agreement would empower more moderate figures, although he said he was not counting on it.
“Who knows?” he added. “Iran may change.” But if not, he said, the United States retains “the most firepower” to address any contingencies.
“It’s not as if in all these conversations, I’m leaving all my, you know, rifles at the door,” he said.
Asked about an Obama Doctrine, he said: “The doctrine is we will engage, but we preserve all our capabilities. And I’ve been very clear that Iran will not get a nuclear weapon on my watch, and I think they should understand that we mean it. But I say that hoping that we can conclude this diplomatic arrangement and that it ushers in a new era in U.S.-Iranian relations.”
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