Robert Satloff is the Segal Executive Director of The Washington Institute, a post he assumed in January 1993.
Articles & Testimony
Now that the president has won the big fight, Americans across the political divide hope he will stop quashing attempts to repair the nuclear deal's flaws.
Congratulations, President Obama. You set out to win congressional approval of the Iran nuclear agreement -- or, more precisely, avoid disapproval -- and you executed this mission with merciless precision. You were masterful.
While the bar for victory was always low -- just one-third of either house of Congress -- you took no risks. You decided early on that your surest path to victory would be to maintain the loyalty of the Democratic base, even if it meant that an accord you described as the most important foreign policy decision in a decade would pass with minorities in both the House and Senate. In contrast, one should note, the START treaty with the Soviets you like to cite as a previous example of "diplomacy with the devil" was approved with more than a two-thirds margin in the Senate; even the much-critiqued Iraq war resolution had majority support.
Soon, the Iran debate will move on to its next phase, when legislators table numerous proposals to plug holes in the agreement and strengthen broader deterrence against Iran. The key question is whether there is a legislative majority for the sort of sensible ideas that you have so far deflected in the pursuit of a 'yes' vote...
