WarSclerotic

Six weeks before Congress is called upon to decide, it has become increasingly clear that the path to approval of the Vienna agreement will be more arduous than expected.

There is considerable doubt that U.S. President Barack Obama — who invested all his prestige and presidential resources in securing, at all costs, a final-status agreement on Iran’s nuclear program — will be able to pass what he views as a cornerstone of his presidential legacy.

The center of the struggle currently raging full force to secure votes from wavering Democratic senators (13 of whom would need to join the Republicans to override a presidential veto) is a direct reflection of the intense debate within the American public on this issue. We should recall that when it comes to voting patterns in the House of Representatives and the Senate, American lawmakers must always remain sensitive and attentive to the swirling political winds, which often set boundaries and red lines for them. After all, if they want to remain in politics, they must reflect the desires and wishes of their constituencies, rather than engage in unilateralism.

If at first it seemed most Americans would come to terms with the Vienna agreement, today — as the contours of the deal are being revealed layer by layer — the picture is changing dramatically over what looks more and more like unconditional capitulation to Iranian dictates. This trend is clearly illustrated in a poll conducted by CNN last week, according to which 52% of the American public oppose the deal, while only 44% support it. In the immediate wake of the deal’s signing, if we recall, the numbers were reversed. Other polls showing that two-thirds of the public believes the deal won’t prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons illustrate yet another aspect of the mosaic of widely held opinions and beliefs, which, if they come together and gain steam in the coming weeks, will form an unassailable obstacle for the administration ahead of the vote in Congress.

These changing winds, meanwhile, can undoubtedly be traced to the recent hearings before the Senate Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and its counterpart committee in the House of Representatives, which caused the White House considerable damage. Indeed, during the hearings we learned, among other things, that the deal contains “black boxes” and other confidential clauses that are hidden not only from the public, but also from Congress (and from some senior administration officials). It is no surprise, therefore, that dissenting voices are on the rise. It is also not surprising that pundits — not only from the conservative camp — are today evoking historical precedents that illustrate the common thread of naiveté, over-optimism and purely mystical beliefs held by U.S. leaders in the power of the written word to mold the behavioral patterns of bitter ideological adversaries, such as the former Soviet Union.

Indeed, Obama’s concept of the importance of gestures and unilateral trust-building measures toward Iran is seen today as identical to former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s efforts to establish a true partnership with the Stalin’s Soviet Union, based on far-reaching, and bizarre, American concessions (specifically over Poland). In the grand superpower context, this approach of appeasement contributed to the outbreak of the Cold War, and there is nothing to do but wait and see if the 44th president’s appeasement will lead to a disastrous hot war.

In any case, it is abundantly clear that the negative trends in public opinion have already begun trickling through to Capitol Hill. We can see, among other things, that Sen. Chuck Schumer, one of the leaders of the Democratic Party (who has been on the fence since the deal was signed), is now leaning toward rejecting the deal. If he indeed decides to cross the party line, it could provide a tail wind for the other undecided Democrats. Such a development would bring an end to the deal, which for the president is a primary foreign policy objective in terms of his legacy, and cast a large shadow over his presidency’s foreign affairs and defense policies.