Returning to the theme that launched his first White House bid, President Barack Obama pitched his Iran nuclear deal Wednesday by urging Congress not to repeat its mistake of approving the 2003 Iraq War. 
 
 “Congressional rejection of this deal leaves any U.S. administration that is absolutely committed to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon with one option — another war in the Middle East,” Obama warned. 
 
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 In tones that alternated between impassioned, incredulous and mocking of the Iran deal’s critics, Obama offered his strongest — and most political — argument yet for the agreement struck on July 14. Departing from the substance of the deal, Obama spent several minutes focusing on the track record of its opponents. 
 
 “The same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran deal,” Obama told an audience at American University. He said those critics exaggerate threats, obscure the true costs of war, and prefer military action over diplomacy. 
 
 Obama’s target audience: the few dozen undecided House and Senate Democrats who control the fate of the deal in Congress. A day before the first Republican presidential debate, Obama was also speaking to an American public with mixed views on Iran, but which overwhelmingly thinks the Iraq War was a mistake. 
 
 More than at anytime in his presidency, Obama reverted to arguments he made repeatedly early in his first presidential bid. Some former aides said the speech brought back memories of Obama’s insurgent primary campaign in Iowa in late 2007. 
 
 “When I ran for President eight years ago as a candidate who had opposed the decision to go to war in Iraq, I said that America didn’t just have to end that war — we had to end the mindset that got us there in the first place,” Obama said. 
 
 Obama argued that opponents of the deal, who insist that it is too weak, are stuck in the mindset of Washington “conventional wisdom” and a cavalier attitude toward the unpredictable consequences of war. He urged members of Congress, who are expected to vote on the deal in September, to “worry less about being labeled weak [and] worry more about getting it right.” 
 
 Unmentioned in Obama’s speech was Hillary Clinton’s 2002 vote to authorize force in Iraq, which likely allowed Obama to derail her path to the 2008 Democratic nomination. Nor did he mention identical votes by two other members of his administration who were then in the Senate: Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden. Several other influential Democrats who backed the war remain in Congress, including New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer. 
 
 Obama did not single out any critics, though his voice rose in frustration when he described opposition to the Iran deal “in many cases offered by the same people who seem to have a compunction with being repeatedly wrong, led to a war that did more to strengthen Iran and more to isolate the United States than anything we have done in the decade since.” 
 
 The argument drew a quick and angry rebuke from two prominent Iraq War backers who are also fierce critics of the pact. Obama’s address was “another example of his reliance on endless strawmen to divert attention from his failed policies,” said Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham in a joint statement. 
 
 Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker also blasted the speech to POLITICO, calling it “partisan” and misleading. 
 
 The idea that war is the only alternative to the deal is a “straw man,” Corker said. “Our military officials that have sat with the administration all the way through this have said: Never ever has there been any discussion about the fact if this deal falls apart there will be military action. Never.” 
 
 In a statement, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce noted that, in Senate testimony last week, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said the U.S. military had “a range of options” for confronting Iran short of war. 
 
 Corker suggested that Obama’s emphasis on the undesirability of bombing Iran — which he said would set back its program only a few years with other dangerous consequences — has undermined America’s leverage. 
 
 “This president is not going to carry out military action against Iran. Iran knows that,” Corker said. 
 
 Obama took care to note that he has ordered military action in seven countries and sent tens of thousands of U.S. troops into battle, nearly all of them in Afghanistan during his first term. 
 
 Obama also infuriated some Republicans by arguing that they had made “common cause” with Iranian hard-liners opposed to the deal who chant “Death to America” at public rallies. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement calling the comment “bizarre” and “offensive,” and said it “goes way over the line of civil discourse.” 
 
 The assault on critics of the Iran deal book-ended a speech that mainly reiterated Obama’s previous arguments on behalf of the agreement, under which Iran will accept limits on its nuclear program for 10 to 15 years, and in some areas longer, in return for an end to economic sanctions. 
 
 Obama repeated his argument that the deal represented the best effort of diplomacy and that a stronger alternative is not plausible. 
 
 “Those who say we can just walk away from this deal and maintain sanctions are selling a fantasy,” Obama argued, one of several instances where he belittled his critics’ arguments. White House officials say Obama has been frustrated with what he considers unserious critiques of the nuclear pact from Republicans. 
 
 Elsewhere in the speech, for instance, Obama mocked “lobbyists and pundits [who] were suddenly transformed into armchair nuclear scientists,” second-guessing credentialed experts like Energy Secretary Earnest Moniz. 
 
 ”I’ve had to make a lot of tough calls as president. But whether this deal is good for American security is not a tough call. It’s not even close,” Obama said. 
 
 If the deal fails, he argued, “the alternatives to a military option will have been exhausted,” and America will be headed toward “another war in the Middle East” with what he called unpredictable consequences. 
 
 “If we’ve learned anything from the last decade, it’s that wars in general — and wars in the Middle East in particular — are anything but simple,” Obama said. 
 
 Congress can vote to disapprove the deal and prevent Obama from suspending tough U.S. sanctions on Iran, which could bring down the entire agreement. Obama would veto such a measure, and Congress would need a two-thirds vote in each chamber to override it. 
 
 Despite a fierce lobbying campaign by opponents of the deal and the government of Israel, the agreement seems likely to survive. But the relentlessness of the administration’s sales pitch — including Obama’s powerful language Wednesday — indicates that the White House is not taking that outcome for granted. 
 
 Obama opened his address by recalling a historic speech 52 years earlier at the same location by President John F. Kennedy, who argued for negotiating with the Soviet Union in the name of world peace. “Strength, in his view, included powerful armed forces and a willingness to stand up for our values around the world,” Obama said. “But he rejected the prevailing attitude among some foreign policy circles that equated security with a perpetual war footing.” 
 
 The speech opened on a lighter note when Obama, who arrived nearly 40 minutes late, explained the reason for his tardiness: “I apologize for the slight delay,” he said with a grin. “Even presidents have problems with toner.” 
 
 Burgess Everett contributed to this report. ||||| President Obama lashed out at critics of the Iran nuclear deal on Wednesday, saying many of those who backed the U.S. invasion of Iraq now want to reject the Iran accord and put the Middle East on the path toward another war. 
 
 Obama also said that if Congress rejects the deal, it will undermine America’s standing in global diplomacy, leaving the United States isolated and putting Israel in even greater peril. 
 
 While calling the nuclear accord with Iran “the strongest nonproliferation agreement ever negotiated,” Obama also seemed to turn the vote on the deal into a referendum on the U.S. invasion of Iraq a dozen years ago, a decision he portrayed as the product of a “mind-set characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy.” 
 
 Obama said that when he first ran for president, he believed “that America didn’t just have to end that war. We had to end the mind-set that got us there in the first place.” He added that “now, more than ever, we need clear thinking in our foreign policy.” 
 
 It was the president’s sharpest attack yet on opponents of the Iran nuclear deal, which he sees as a defining achievement amid an often rocky foreign policy record. 
 
 President Obama hammered critics of the nuclear deal negotiated with Iran, saying Republicans in the Congress who oppose it are making “common cause” with Iranian hard-liners. (AP) 
 
 [How the Obama White House runs foreign policy] 
 
 In a two-hour White House meeting Tuesday night with Jewish American groups, Obama seemed particularly bothered by a multimillion-dollar ad campaign aimed at stopping the deal. On Wednesday afternoon, the president used his Twitter account to say: “There’s no such thing as a ‘better deal.’ Walking away risks war.” 
 
 As he nears the end of his tenure, Obama has been arguing forcefully that diplomacy can yield benefits, even as his administration continues to use targeted strikes by drones and struggles to deal with civil war in Syria, the rise of the Islamic State and confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. 
 
 “I have not shied away from using force when necessary,” Obama said, noting he had authorized military actions in seven countries. “. . . I’ve had to make a lot of tough calls as president, but whether or not this deal is good for American security is not one of those calls. It’s not even close.” 
 
 Obama spoke from American University, the same venue used by President John F. Kennedy to promote efforts to reach a landmark nuclear test-ban treaty with Moscow at the height of the Cold War. Obama invoked that 1963 speech, saying Kennedy “rejected the prevailing attitude among some foreign policy circles that equated security with a perpetual war footing.” 
 
 Instead, Obama said, Kennedy sought “a practical and attainable peace, a peace based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions, on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements.” 
 
 But many observers felt that Obama’s speech was more caustic and partisan than Kennedy’s. “Walk away from this agreement and you will get a better deal — for Iran,” he said to critics. 
 
 Here are key moments from President Obama's speech at American University on Aug. 5, addressing the international deal on Iran's nuclear program that Congress is considering. (AP) 
 
 At one point, Obama brushed aside comments by Iranian hard-liners who he said do not reflect what all Iranians believe and are the “most comfortable with the status quo.” The president added: “It’s those hard-liners chanting ‘Death to America’ who have been most opposed to the deal. They’re making common cause with the Republican caucus.” 
 
 Later, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called on Obama “to retract his bizarre and preposterous comments” and said that Democrats who have already stated their opposition would be “insulted” by them. 
 
 Obama did not shy away from engaging foes of the Iran deal and linking them to the decision to invade Iraq. 
 
 “The single greatest beneficiary in the region of that war was the Islamic Republic of Iran, which saw its strategic position strengthened by the removal of its long-standing enemy, Saddam Hussein,” Obama added. He also noted that when President George W. Bush took office, Iran did not possess any centrifuges, the machines needed to produce nuclear bomb material, while when Obama took office Iran already had installed several thousand. 
 
 Even some supporters of the nuclear deal were put off by Obama’s argument. Many critics of the agreement were proponents of war in Iraq, but that does not make them warmongers, said Robert Einhorn, an arms-control and nonproliferation analyst with the Brookings Institution. 
 
 “I think it will offend more than convert,” said Aaron David Miller, a vice president at the Wilson Center and a former Middle East negotiator at the State Department. Miller supports the agreement but said Obama’s speech “paints those who are not reckless critics of this agreement with a large brush.” 
 
 Others who have met directly with Obama said they were impressed by the resolve with which he is making his case. They argue that the president has no choice but to fight against fierce criticism from Republican rivals and some Jewish groups opposed to the deal. 
 
 Obama has been irked by ad campaigns against the deal, including one comparing him to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister leading up to World War II, who has been widely blamed with not standing up to Adolf Hitler. 
 
 Alexandra Stanton, a board member at J Street, a group that supports the deal, said Obama “has a right to combat what he thinks are campaigns against him laden with non-facts and offensive statements. He has a right to call that out, a right to say he’s concerned about it and that he finds it objectionable.” 
 
 Obama appears to have made inroads with some Senate Democrats. On Wednesday, Sens. Chris Murphy (Conn.) and Angus King (Maine), an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, announced their support. On Tuesday, Sens. Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Timothy M. Kaine (Va.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.) backed the plan. 
 
 But the president has been less successful in wooing opponents among influential Jewish American groups. 
 
 “He feels the arguments that have been deployed against the deal are inaccurate and it’s his job to set the record straight,” said Jason Isaacson, who is the director of government and international affairs at the American Jewish Committee and attended the meeting with Obama. 
 
 Although Isaacson called Obama “a forceful salesman,” the American Jewish Committee announced Wednesday that it would oppose the nuclear deal. 
 
 Republicans also criticized how Obama has framed the debate. 
 
 “Does anybody in America believe that if we turn down this deal, this president is going to engage in war with Iran?” asked Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). “That’s one of those straw men that demeans the debate.” 
 
 The heart of Obama’s address sought to hammer home the administration’s views that the alternative to the deal is conflict. 
 
 “I say this not to be provocative,” Obama said. “I am stating a fact. . . . The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some form of war, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon.” 
 
 [Both sides court every vote in Congress] 
 
 Obama and other top administration officials, including Secretary of State John F. Kerry, have framed the Iran deal as a last chance to roll back Iran’s nuclear ambitions and, in particular, the scope of its ability to enrich uranium. In exchange, international sanctions on Iran would be eased. 
 
 Speaking directly to lawmakers opposing the deal, Obama said rejection would cost more than missing a chance to curb Iran’s nuclear program. 
 
 “We will have lost something more precious,” he said, “America’s credibility as a leader of diplomacy, America’s credibility as an anchor of the international system.” 
 
 Obama emphasized that every nation that has weighed in on the deal has backed it — except Israel, which fears for its own security and whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been among the most vocal critics. 
 
 “I do not doubt his sincerity, but I believe he is wrong,” Obama said. 
 
 The West and its allies fear that Iran’s nuclear fuel facilities could one day be expanded to make weapons-grade material. Iran insists it does not seek nuclear arms but demands that it retain the capacity to make its own fuel for peaceful reactors. 
 
 Under the deal reached last month, U.N. inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency would have “unprecedented” access to Iranian nuclear sites, Kerry has told lawmakers. But some critics have questioned provisions that require advance notice — and possible negotiations with Iran — to inspect other areas of possible nuclear-related activity. The procedure could delay inspectors by up to 24 days. 
 
 Obama retorted that once an area of suspicion is identified, it would be watched “continuously” until inspectors can get to it and that they would get in even if Iran objects. 
 
 Obama also addressed complaints that lifting economic pressures on Iran could end up funding Iran’s military and its proxies in the region, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 
 
 “If we are serious about confronting Iran’s destabilizing activities, it is hard to imagine a worse approach than blocking this deal,” he said. “Instead, we need to check the behavior that we are concerned about directly, by helping our allies in the region strengthen their own capabilities.” 
 
 The Iran pact faces widespread opposition in Congress — even among some Democrats — before the Sept. 17 deadline to vote. If Congress votes for a bill rejecting the deal, Obama has promised to veto it, setting up the key showdown over whether opponents could muster enough votes to secure an override. 
 
 “Shut out the noise,” he urged lawmakers. “Consider the stakes.” 
 
 Brian Murphy, Carol Morello, Karoun Demirjian and Mike DeBonis contributed to this report. ||||| President Obama urged support for the Iran nuclear deal while speaking at American University in Washington. He outlined the deal and denounced critics' claims that the deal would open a pathway for Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. VPC 
 
 President Obama listens as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaks during their meeting in the Oval Office at the White House Tuesday. (Photo: Susan Walsh, AP) 
 
 WASHINGTON — President Obama will deliver a crucial speech on the Iran nuclear agreement Wednesday, arguing that the congressional vote that could block the deal is "the most consequential foreign policy debate since the decision to go to war in Iraq," the White House said. 
 
 White House aides said Obama would "point out that the same people who supported war in Iraq are opposing diplomacy with Iran, and that it would be an historic mistake to squander this opportunity" to contain Iran's nuclear program. 
 
 The framing of that message appears to be a direct appeal to congressional Democrats; while some opposed the Iraq War, others came to regret their votes to authorize it. Obama will need their votes to get the one-thirds vote necessary to sustain a veto. 
 
 Since the Iran deal isn't a treaty, it doesn't need congressional approval, but can be rejected with a two-thirds vote of both chambers. On Tuesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee formally introduced a resolution to do just that, and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy promised a September vote once the House returns from its summer recess. 
 
 The deal, two years in the making, would relax sanctions against Iran in exchange for a promise not to develop nuclear weapons and inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Critics, including every major Republican presidential candidate, say Iran cannot be trusted and that the economic benefits of the deal will only strengthen Iran's ability to threaten Israel and foment extremism throughout the Middle East. 
 
 Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell urged Obama to "avoid tired, obviously untrue talking points about this being some choice between a bad deal and war." 
 
 "Of course it isn't," McConnell said Wednesday. "He knows it isn't. He himself has said that 'a bad deal is worse than no deal.'" 
 
 Obama made a special appeal to the Jewish community Tuesday, meeting at the White House with about two-dozen leaders of Jewish groups that span the religious and ideological spectrum, including the conservative American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the liberal J Street, and leaders of reform and orthodox congregations. 
 
 The president is trying to counter a determined lobbying campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who continued his months-long effort to scuttle the deal by appealing to American Jews in a webcast Tuesday. "I don’t oppose this deal because I want war,” he told them. "I oppose this deal because I want to prevent war.” 
 
 Wednesday's speech, at American University in Washington, is already drawing historical parallels. It's the same place President Kennedy gave his 1963 speech proposing a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union at the apex of the Cold War. 
 
 The White House seemed to be encouraging those comparisons — to a point. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said both Kennedy and Obama "entered into a diplomatic agreement with an adversary of the United States that did succeed in advancing the national security interests of the United States." 
 
 But unlike Kennedy, Earnest said, Obama did not have to make any concessions about its own defense. "There’s no impact from this nuclear agreement on the United States and either our nuclear programs or our military programs," Earnest said Tuesday. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1SML4mR ||||| The United States and five other world powers have reached a deal with Iran that would place strict limits on Tehran’s nuclear program in return for ending sanctions on its economy, the culmination of years of delicate diplomacy pursued by President Barack Obama despite warnings the agreement could strengthen Iran’s Islamist regime and leave it dangerously close to a nuclear bomb. 
 
 The historic accord, reached by Secretary of State John Kerry and his international counterparts in Vienna on Tuesday after 18 days of intense negotiations, now faces review from a hostile Republican-led Congress, opposition from every GOP presidential candidate, from Israel’s government and from Sunni Arab monarchs. The deal’s long and complex implementation process also leaves it vulnerable to unraveling. 
 
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 Speaking from the White House Tuesday morning, Obama called the deal a victory for diplomacy that would prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and avert a possible conflict with Iran. 
 
 “No deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East,” Obama said. He reaffirmed America’s commitment to Israel’s security and Gulf Arab states like Saudi Arabia, while adding that the U.S. is “open to engagement on the basis of mutual interests and mutual respect.” 
 
 Obama also hinted at the possibility of a larger thaw in U.S.-Iranian relations. ”It is possible to change,” Obama told Iranians, urging them to take a “different path, one of tolerance, of peaceful resolution to conflict… This deal opens an opportunity to move in a new direction. We should seize it.” 
 
 “This is the good deal that we have sought,” Kerry said in a statement from Vienna. 
 
 If it succeeds, the agreement could upgrade Obama’s checkered foreign policy legacy, as well provide a crowning achievement for Kerry’s 30-year political career. Analysts call it one of the modern era’s most important arms control agreements, in a league with the 1970 international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the 1994 START nuclear missile treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. 
 
 Some believe it could begin to normalize relations between Iran and the West after three decades of cold war, although Obama and Kerry have denied that is their goal, while others predict that an emboldened Iran will seek greater dominance across the Middle East. But on Tuesday the European Union’s top foreign policy official, Frederica Mogherini, called the pact “much more than a nuclear deal,” adding: “It can open a new chapter.” 
 
 On Twitter, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani said that with the “unnecessary crisis resolved, new horizons emerge with a focus on shared challenges.” 
 
 That will hardly please Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who tweeted: “From the initial reports we can already conclude that this agreement is a historic mistake.” 
 
 According to a 159-page document posted online by Russia’s foreign ministry, which it called the final text of the deal, a U.N. resolution lifting sanctions will also express the Security Council’s “desire to build a new relationship with Iran.” 
 
 The text says also that Iran has vowed that “under no circumstances” will it ever “seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” And it describes a joint commission composed of its seven parties to monitor the deal’s implementation. 
 
 One issue that will draw close scrutiny from nuclear experts is Iran’s ability to research advanced nuclear technologies while its program is constrained by a deal. Iran now relies on 1970s-era centrifuges to enrich uranium, which are highly inefficient. The document posted by Russian foreign ministry says that after 8½ years Iran can begin testing up to 30 modern IR-6 and IR-8 centrifuges. Analysts fear that, if Iran masters top-quality centrifuges, it might be capable of producing a bomb in a matter of months or weeks soon after the deal’s main restrictions lift in a decade. 
 
 On an issue that snagged the talks in their final days, the deal will free Iran from an arms embargo after five years, Obama said Tuesday. 
 
 Obama has made the deal a central plank of his foreign policy. Dating from early in the 2008 presidential campaign, he called for fresh thinking toward American adversaries like Iran. As president, he has argued that it is wiser to negotiate with a nemesis of more than three decades than risk a military confrontation over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. 
 
 
 
 But he has also insisted, in response to the many critics who called him desperate for a deal, that signing off on a weak agreement is not in his interest. “If Iran has a nuclear weapon, it’s my name on this,” the president said in May — a measure of just how keenly aware he is of the deal’s implications for his legacy. 
 
 The deal came 18 days after Kerry arrived in Vienna for a round of talks whose initial deadline was June 30. As early July came and went, the talks bogged down in a handful of issues, including whether and how to lift a U.N. embargo on Iran’s import and export of conventional arms. 
 
 Kerry, too, was accused of wanting a deal too badly, a charge his marathon session in Vienna — all of it on crutches, as he recovers from a broken leg — may have defused. 
 
 The comprehensive deal fills in the details of a preliminary framework deal reached in April by the U.S. and its negotiating partners — France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia. A document said to be about 100 pages will be transmitted to Congress and made public, although some portions are expected to remain classified. 
 
 Obama’s main goal has been to impose limits on Iran’s fast-advancing nuclear program to ensure that Tehran can’t acquire a nuclear bomb faster than the U.S. and its allies can act to stop it. The deal seeks to do that by reducing Iran’s capacity to produce highly enriched uranium and plutonium, slowing its research and development into nuclear technology, and imposing inspections and monitoring of Iran’s nuclear activities to prevent cheating. 
 
 The goal is to achieve a “breakout time” — or the time it would take Iran to produce the nuclear material required for one bomb — of at least one year. That is long enough, U.S. officials believe, for the world community to take punitive action that could include airstrikes against Iranian facilities. 
 
 Some elements of the deal were locked in by an April 2 political framework agreement reached in Lausanne, Switzerland. They include a commitment by Iran to reduce its number of installed centrifuges from 19,000 to 6,104, with only 5,060 of those enriching uranium for 10 years. Centrifuges spin gaseous uranium at supersonic speeds to increase its purity to levels suitable for a nuclear weapon. 
 
 Iran has also agreed to modify a plutonium-fueled nuclear reactor so that its fuel cannot be reprocessed for use in a weapon. And it will allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency broad access to suspected nuclear sites, as well as cooperate with an IAEA investigation into its past activities, although many crucial details have yet to be released. 
 
 The comprehensive agreement will leave many powerful critics deeply dissatisfied. Netanyahu, who sees Iran as an existential threat to his country, has said repeatedly that the deal will “pave Iran’s path to the bomb”; several Sunni Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, worry that the end of sanctions will free up tens of billions of dollars that Iran can direct to militant allies like Hezbollah and sectarian battles from Iraq to Syria to Yemen. 
 
 The emerging outlines of the deal have also drawn withering fire for months from Capitol Hill, fueled by Republicans — and many Democrats — who agree with Netanyahu that it jeopardizes Israel’s security. A vote of disapproval by Congress would prevent Obama from lifting sanctions on Tehran, although administration officials believe they can maintain enough Democratic backing to sustain a presidential veto. 
 
 The nuclear talks began after years of Western worry over Iran’s nuclear aims, despite Tehran’s insistence that its program was only for scientific and energy purposes. 
 
 The 2002 revelation of Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a plutonium reactor at Arak — sites previously undeclared to the U.N. in violation of Iran’s international commitments — badly undercut Tehran’s claims. So did the 2009 discovery of a secret, underground enrichment facility buried in a mountain at Fordow, near the holy city of Qom. 
 
 In 2007, an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community found that Iran had pursued a military dimension to its nuclear program — in effect, an Iranian Manhattan Project — but ceased the work in 2003. Iran has failed to comply fully with IAEA inspectors pursuing the question, a major point of contention in the talks. 
 
 The United States, which broke off diplomatic relations with Iran after the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution and capture of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, has long used sanctions and other tools to punish Iran for its behavior. In recent years the sanctions vice tightened considerably as Russia and China backed harsh U.N. measures, the U.S. Congress targeted Iran’s financial sector, and the Obama administration persuaded growing economies like India and South Korea agreed to sharply limit their consumption of Iranian oil. 
 
 At the same time, after taking office Obama continued a Bush-era program targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure with cyberwar, in the form of the Stuxnet virus, which delayed Iran’s enrichment program. 
 
 The U.S., U.N. and EU sanctions badly hurt Iran’s economy; inflation soared above 40 percent in 2013. U.S. sanctions threatening to punish foreign financial institutions for doing business with Iran landed a particularly painful blow. 
 
 In mid-2012, after exchanging messages through the Arab state of Oman, Iranian and American officials secretly met to lay the groundwork for potential nuclear talks. This involved diplomats dispatched by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, including her close aide Jake Sullivan, now a top adviser to her presidential campaign. 
 
 Talks became possible in June 2013, after Iranians elected as president a relatively moderate Iranian cleric, Hassan Rouhani. He offered the West a more conciliatory face than his hardline predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 
 
 With the apparent blessing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word on all state decisions in Iran, Rouhani spoke directly via phone with Obama in September 2013, kicking off the public phase of the nuclear talks. 
 
 Despite a willingness to bargain over its nuclear program, Iran has pursued an aggressive foreign policy elsewhere in the Middle East, alarming its neighbors. 
 
 For example, Iran is backing Syrian President Bashar Assad against Sunni groups trying to topple him. At the same time, Iranian-trained Shiite militias are indirectly helping U.S.-backed Iraqi troops trying to defeat the Islamic State terrorist group in Iraq. And in Yemen, Iran has backed the Houthi rebels, whose positions are being bombed by Saudi Arabia with U.S. assistance. 
 
 
 
 Critics of the deal fear that once Iran starts to get relief from sanctions — including access to more than $100 billion in frozen assets — it will use the money to wreak more havoc in the region. 
 
 U.S. officials argue that Iran’s regional meddling costs little, and that the country is more likely to direct the influx of funds to repairing its economy and its infrastructure. At the same time, Obama has promised more military aid to Arab countries and repeatedly reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security. 
 
 In many ways, the hardest part of the nuclear deal begins now, with its implementation. 
 
 Congress will review the deal, and is likely to vote to prevent Obama from suspending sanctions on Iran — a measure Obama is sure to veto. In that scenario, the votes of a few dozen Senate Democrats could become decisive in a veto override battle. 
 
 The nuclear deal will also drive the 2016 presidential campaign’s foreign policy debate. Several Republican contenders are already vowing to kill the deal if they win the White House. 
 
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– President Obama today began his campaign to convince Congress to back his Iran nuclear deal with a major speech in which he characterized the upcoming vote as one about war or peace. If the deal falls through, opponents can expect a likely outcome, he said at American University: “Another war in the Middle East.” Obama added that “I am not saying this to be provocative,” reports the Washington Post. “I am stating a fact ... the choice we have is some kind of war, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in three months, but soon.” In the speech, Obama also drew a parallel with the vote to authorize the Iraq war. “Many of the same people who made the case for war with Iraq” oppose the Iran deal, he said. They need to “worry less about being labeled weak [and] worry more about getting it right," because that war "did more to strengthen Iran and more to isolate the United States than anything we have done in the decade since," reports Politico. The Iraq message seems to be aimed at Democrats who voted in favor of the war and now regret it, because Obama will need their votes to sustain any veto, reports USA Today. The speech kicks off "a campaign of private entreaties and public advocacy over the next several weeks" to win approval of the deal, notes the New York Times.