VIENNA — The United States and other world powers reached a historic agreement with Iran on Tuesday, aimed at preventing the Islamic republic from building a nuclear weapon in return for the lifting of sanctions that have isolated the country and hobbled its economy.
President Barack Obama, after announcing the agreement in Washington, quickly turned to what may be the more arduous task of selling the deal to skeptical lawmakers and U.S. allies in the Middle East.
“This deal demonstrates that American diplomacy can bring about real and meaningful change,” Obama told a nation that awoke Tuesday morning to news of the accord. He said it would ensure that Iran had no possibility to achieve rapid nuclear weapons “breakout” for at least the next decade.
“Every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off,” Obama said.
In Vienna news briefings and Washington conference calls, senior administration officials joined the president in hailing the agreement — which limits Iran’s nuclear capability and imposes strict international monitoring in exchange for lifting international economic sanctions — as a way to make America and the world more secure.
Officials suggested that the deal might also help build momentum inside Iran to move away from radicalism and toward greater ties with the West.
“This deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction. We should seize it,” Obama said.
As a first order of business, one senior administration official said, Iran should seize “this important opportunity to make a humanitarian gesture” by releasing three jailed Americans it is holding and help find a fourth who disappeared there years ago.
Calls to lawmakers
Obama called congressional leaders late Monday to apprise them of the deal, and officials said he would expand his outreach in the coming days to include other key lawmakers. Under compromise legislation he signed in May, Obama must now give Congress 60 days to review the deal before using his executive power to waive statutory sanctions.
“I welcome scrutiny of the details of this agreement,” Obama said. But he warned that he would veto any legislation that tried to prevent its implementation. “We do not have to accept an inevitable spiral into conflict. And we certainly shouldn’t seek it,” he said in response to Republican charges of appeasement.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Tuesday that Obama had “abandoned” initial goals to strip Iran of its nuclear capability. “If, in fact, it’s as bad a deal as I think it is at this moment, we’ll do everything that we can to stop it,” Boehner told reporters.
Obama dismissed such threats as “posturing,” adding that “tough talk from Washington does not solve problems.”
Obama also called leaders in the Middle East, officials said. Reaction from U.S. allies ranged from concern among the Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf that lifting sanctions would increase Shiite Iran’s efforts to expand its powers, to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assessment that Iran would not only get a nuclear weapon out of the agreement but also a “cash bonanza” to continue support for terrorism once sanctions are gone.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who spearheaded the talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, said the calls to keep pressuring Iran, rather than seeking a diplomatic solution, were unrealistic.
“Sanctioning Iran until it capitulates makes for a powerful talking point and a pretty good political speech,” Kerry told reporters here. “But it’s not achievable outside a world of fantasy.”
Lawmakers have 60 days to review the agreement, totaling nearly 100 pages with a principal document and five technical annexes.
During that period, Obama has agreed not to use his executive authority to waive statutory U.S. sanctions on Iran. Congress will decide whether it wants to vote — by simple majority — a resolution of disapproval, which would permanently eliminate the president’s ability to waive the sanctions.
Obama has said he would veto such a law.
Congress would need a two-thirds vote to override a veto, requiring at least 13 Senate Democrats and 44 House Democrats to vote against their party’s leader, assuming all members voted and all Republicans backed an override.
While some key Democrats cited concerns about the deal, most stopped short of opposing it. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said he’ll “go through this agreement with a fine-tooth comb.”
Starting the administration’s push to sell the agreement, Vice President Joe Biden was expected to meet with House Democrats on Wednesday.
The final accord came at the end of marathon Monday meetings that stretched past midnight, the culmination of more than two weeks of up-and-down endgame negotiations that the administration insisted it was willing to abandon if its own red lines were not accepted.
Certification needed
The agreement will not take effect until Iran is certified by the International Atomic Energy Agency to have met its terms — something Iran says will happen in a matter of weeks but that Western diplomats have said could take at least until the end of the year. Administration officials said a new U.N. Security Council resolution, which would incorporate old sanctions resolutions and the conditions for lifting them, has been drafted and could be introduced within the next week. A U.S. trade embargo, as well as other non-nuclear U.S. sanctions, would not be affected.
A senior administration official said that until Iranian compliance is verified, an 18-month-old interim agreement restricting Iran’s nuclear activities will remain in place, as will sanctions.
In the end, the basic outline of the agreement hewed closely to, and in some areas expanded, a political framework reached in early April between Iran and the P5+1 — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — along with the European Union.
The overall scope of the deal seeks to put Iran at least one year away from nuclear weapons “breakout” levels — the time it would take to produce enough fissile material for one nuclear bomb.
RELATED
Iranians celebrate
TEHRAN, Iran — Iranians reacted with delight and relief at news of a landmark nuclear deal with world powers that will end years of bruising economic sanctions. President Hassan Rouhani called the pact a “new chapter” for his country.
Giti, a 48-year-old engineer who didn’t want to give her surname because of sensitivity surrounding speaking to the foreign media, said that young people are optimistic the deal will boost the economy and lead to better living and more jobs.
Giti was among thousands of Iranians who poured into the major squares in Tehran in celebration and brought traffic to a standstill as motorists beeped their horns and waved flags out the windows. Revelers blew into vuvuzela horns and chanted phrases such as “Rouhani, we thank you.”
Slim margin favors relations with Iran
A slim majority of Americans (51 percent) say the United States should have a diplomatic relationship with Iran, while about 45 percent said it should not, according to a new AP/GfK poll.
A majority of Americans — 56 percent — consider Iran to be an enemy, the poll found, while 31 percent consider Iran unfriendly but not an enemy.
Altogether, 45 percent of Americans in the poll said the sanctions should remain at their current level, and 32 percent thought they should be increased. Just 12 percent thought sanctions should be decreased, and 7 percent said they should be eliminated.
The poll of 1,004 adults has a sampling error of 3.4 percentage points.
Wife of imprisoned pastor disappointed
The wife of an Idaho pastor held prisoner in Iran says she’s deeply disappointed that the U.S. agreed to a nuclear deal with the Mideast nation without first getting her husband released.
Naghmeh Abedini, who lives in Boise with their two children, now says she’s focused on pressing Congress to review the deal with her family in mind.
Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, 34, has been in Iranian custody since September 2012. He was sentenced to eight years when he attempted to build a church network in private homes.
