Agreed. But I would put this in a similar category as “if you like your health insurance, you can keep it.” He’s making a mostly true statement (the likeliest alternative to this deal is armed confrontation between the US and Iran) but forcing it into a bite-sized slogan for political purposes is, yes, a mild* form of demagoguery.
*Mild in comparison to the demagoguery on display when this deal is characterized as appeasement that paves the way to an Iranian nuclear weapon.
Yes, I’d put in that same category. But not for the same reason you did! 
There’s a lot of demagoguery. Such as his accusation that people can only oppose the deal because of "lobbyists’. Hmmm, I wonder who those might be?
Don’t be daft. When he’s referring to lobbyists who oppose the deal, he’s referring to lobbyists who oppose the deal. Pretty simple, really.
And of course no one has ever claimed that “people can only oppose the deal” because of lobbyists.
The President does not believe that anyone can oppose the deal in good faith. Of course, the PResident doesn’t think anyone can oppose him in good faith, period.
Obama is simply mistaken in considering Netanyahu’s attempt to shape American foreign policy as unprecedented. Of course it isn’t. Most famously Churchill made every attempt to influence the US Congress for the benefit of his own country and there have been many such examples. (The US itself is no slouch in attempting to shape the foreign policy of other countries). That’s what leaders do. As Netanyahu has said, Israel isn’t Czechoslovakia, waiting in the wings and excluded while other countries made deals critical to its future well-being.
I don’t know whether the President is really ignorant of history or simply being disingenuous in his statements. I suspect the latter.
I realize that having Israel at the table was impossible, but it doesn’t make it any less a sellout. Any regime that won’t negotiate with Israel is not a regime we should be negotiating with either.
Only four UN members (out of 193) have refused to sign the NPT, and Israel is one of them. Until that changes, it has no right to participate in such negotiations.
It would be ridiculous to include a country with a secret nuclear program in an effort to stop another country from doing so, and I say this as someone who understands why Israel has nukes and mostly approves.
Who we negotiate with ought to be determined by our national interest, not some arbitrary deferral to what makes our clients happy.
Letting our allies know that we have their backs is in our national interest. THe McGovern/Carter/Obama Doctrine would leave us with about 50 nations who are slightly less bent on our destruction than before, and 150 who realize they can’t trust us.
Nothing could more undermine our Western European allies’ respect for us than refusing to deal with Iran for the reason you offered. And they are aghast at the prospect of Congress actually blowing up the deal.
True. Which again, is why we shouldn’t have done this in the first place. Europe had been negotiating with Iran on a seperate track for over a decade. We shouldn’t have joined the talks until Iran was prepared to concede what we wanted from them. Instead, we joined while the talks were making no progress, and made enough concessions so that the talks could make progress.
But yes, I’ve conceded that with the deal already made, there really are no better alternatives.
I don’t see how the world with no Iran negotiations would be any better than today’s world. Iran could/would be much, much closer to a nuclear weapon, and on much more negative footing. War would be more likely.
I think the difference is that you see war with Iran as a potentially good thing (please correct me if I’m wrong). I see it as a complete loss, something that would greatly weaken America and strengthen our enemies.
I see war as a necessary thing if the alternative is Iran getting a nuclear weapon. And “military action” doesn’t necessarily mean war in the sense of Iraq. It could very well be more like what we’re doing in eight other countries. Just bomb the sites as we find them. Iran will keep doing what they are already doing to us, only with more determination.
Maybe this deal will keep them from a nuke. But I also take the President at his word. If Iran rejects the deal, he has a war to prosecute.
And BTW, cheating counts as rejection. Since you’ve claimed that sanctions weren’t keeping Iran from a bomb, then clearly “snapback” is insufficient. If Iran cheats enough that snapback takes place, military action must necessarily follow to keep Iran from a bomb.
“Snapback” (and the sanctions) are punishment intended to dissaude, not preclude any technological nuclear progress. But you’re still missing something – why would war (or bombings) be more likely to prevent Iran from getting nukes? In my mind it could do the opposite, especially if (as I think is possible) they’re not actually all that interest in having nuclear weapons right now, just in the political leverage from making everyone think they are. War with Iran could lead to nukes for Iran.
Not sure how you build a nuclear program under fire. Has anyone ever done it before? No.
But that’s beside the point. If Iran isn’t actually seeking a bomb, then whether the agreement works or not is really of little importance to us. I don’t think the President would be talking about war as the alternative if he didn’t judge that Iran was developing nukes. I do think he lies about things a lot, and I think he makes a lot of empty threats. But he gains nothing from presenting such a stark choice if he doesn’t actually believe that Iran has a very real nuclear weapons program. WIthout a nuclear program, this deal is no more significant than our opening with Cuba. And while I’m sure the President is committed to opening relations with Cuba, I don’t think he’d get this strident if Congress found a way to stop it.
Serious question, I’m not trying to criticize your post here: do you understand the concept of “breakout?”
Oh they definitely have a nuclear weapons program, and they want to get to “breakout”, but they could well be doing so for political/economic reasons (e.g. for leverage to end the sanctions) rather than truly desiring nuclear weapons. And my point is that if we attack them, if they don’t really want the weapons (just the leverage), their calculus could change such that they feel they now require the weapons for their own protection.