How Obama will sell an Iran deal to America, Congress and the world

The White House is gearing up to unleash an unprecedented campaign to sell a nuclear deal with Iran, should President Obama secure it, in a bid to win over divided Americans, skeptical lawmakers and wary Middle Eastern allies.

The blueprint for defending the legacy-defining agreement was described to Yahoo News by current and former officials from the administration and Congress.

Obama and his top national security and foreign policy aides will defend the deal forcefully to the public and in private talks with wavering senators and representatives. They will emphasize the deal’s intrusive monitoring and verification of Iranian nuclear facilities, an approach national security adviser Susan Rice recently summarized in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as “distrust and verify.” They will defend the easing of crippling economic sanctions in return for steps Iran is taking to assure the world that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

Illustration sent by the National Security Council to reporters (@2015 Horsey. Los Angeles Times, all rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency)

Lawmakers will get “as many classified briefings as it takes” from the administration on the more complex aspects of an agreement. Senior diplomats will fan out in an effort to reassure close allies like Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main rival for regional influence, and Israel, even though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seen as an implacable foe of any agreement.

Obama’s approach will, at times, feel more like a sledgehammer than a scalpel — as demonstrated last Wednesday when the National Security Council forwarded the cartoon above to reporters who cover the White House. The drawing landed in reporters’ inboxes under the heading “Select Iran Coverage”; the special clips packages started landing in early March to promote media coverage and expert commentaries that advance the administration’s goals.

Already the campaign is revving up. White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough delivered some of these arguments this week in a speech to J Street, a left-of-center group that supports the talks. The organization’s ideological rival, the AIPAC, opposes the negotiations.

If a deal is done, McDonough said, “Everyone from the president on down will aggressively seek congressional and public support for any deal.”

“The bottom line is this — compared to the alternatives, diplomacy offers the best and most effective way to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and this is our best shot at diplomacy,” McDonough said. “We cannot remove diplomacy from America’s toolbox — that’s not how we’ve come to lead the world.”