A Foreign Policy Gamble by Obama at a Moment of Truth

On the day he took office, President Obama reached out to America’s enemies, offering in his first inaugural address to “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” More than six years later, he has arrived at a moment of truth in testing that proposition with one of the nation’s most intransigent adversaries.

The framework nuclear agreement he reached with Iran on Thursday did not provide the definitive answer to whether Mr. Obama’s audacious gamble will pay off. The fist Iran has shaken at the so-called Great Satan since 1979 has not completely relaxed. But the fingers are loosening, and the agreement, while still incomplete, held out the prospect that it might yet become a handshake.

For a president whose ambitions to remake the world have been repeatedly frustrated, the possibility of a reconciliation after 36 years of hostility between Washington and Tehran now seems tantalizingly within reach, a way to be worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize that even he believed was awarded prematurely. Yet the deal remains unfinished and unsigned, and critics worry that he is giving up too much while grasping for the illusion of peace.

“Right now, he has no foreign policy legacy,” said Cliff Kupchan, an Iran specialist who has been tracking the talks as chairman of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm. “He’s got a list of foreign policy failures. A deal with Iran and the ensuing transformation of politics in the Middle East would provide one of the more robust foreign policy legacies of any recent presidencies. It’s kind of all in for Obama. He has nothing else. So for him, it’s all or nothing.”

 As Mr. Obama stepped into the Rose Garden to announce what he called a historic understanding, he seemed both relieved that it had come together and combative with those in Congress who would tear it apart. While its provisions must be translated into writing by June 30, he presented it as a breakthrough that would, if made final, make the world a safer place, the kind of legacy any president would like to leave. “This has been a long time coming,” he said.

Mr. Obama cited the same John F. Kennedy quote he referenced earlier in the week when visiting a new institute dedicated to the former president’s brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” The sense of celebration was captured by aides standing nearby in the Colonnade who exchanged fist bumps at the end of the president’s remarks.

But Mr. Obama will have a hard time convincing a skeptical Congress, where Republicans and many Democrats are deeply concerned that he has grown so desperate to reach a deal that he is trading away American and Israeli security. As he tries to reach finality with Iran, he will have to fend off legislative efforts, joined even by some of his friends, to force a tougher posture.

House Speaker John A. Boehner, who has been traveling in the Middle East in recent days, repeated his insistence that Congress review any deal before sanctions are eased. “My concerns about Iran’s efforts to foment unrest, brutal violence and terror have only grown,” Mr. Boehner said in a statement. “It would be naïve to suggest the Iranian regime will not continue to use its nuclear program, and any economic relief, to further destabilize the region.”

Mr. Obama tried to reverse that argument on Thursday, framing the choice as either accepting his deal or risking war, a binary formulation his critics reject. “Do you really think that this verifiable deal, if fully implemented, backed by the world’s major powers, is a worse option than the risk of another war in the Middle East?” Mr. Obama asked. If Congress kills the deal, he said, “then it’s the United States that will be blamed for the failure of diplomacy.”

An agreement with Iran remains the most promising goal left in a foreign policy agenda that has unraveled since Mr. Obama took office. Rather than building a new partnership with Russia, he faces a new cold war. Rather than ending the war in Iraq, he has sent American forces back to fight the Islamic State, though primarily from the air. Rather than defeating Al Qaeda, he finds himself chasing its offshoots. Rather than forging peace in the Middle East, he said recently that is beyond his reach.

Mr. Obama still aspires to reorient American foreign policy more toward Asia, and a pending Pacific trade pact could have a lasting impact if he can seal the deal and push it through Congress. He has nudged the world, particularly China, toward more action on climate change. He will count the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba after a half-century of estrangement as a major achievement.

But with so many disappointments, Iran has become something of a holy grail of foreign policy to Mr. Obama, one that could hold the key to a broader reordering of a region that has bedeviled American presidents for generations. Aides say he has spent more time on Iran than any other foreign policy issue except Afghanistan and terrorism.

Since the 1979 Iranian revolution that swept out the Washington-supported shah and brought to power an anti-American Islamic leadership, the country has been the most sustained destabilizing force in the Middle East — a sponsor of the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, a supporter of Shiite militias that killed American soldiers in Iraq, a patron of Syria’s government in its bloody civil war, and now a backer of the rebels who pushed out the president of Yemen.

A nuclear agreement will not change all of that, or perhaps any of that, a point Mr. Obama’s critics have made repeatedly. But Mr. Obama hopes it can be the start of a new era. An Iran that would “rejoin the community of nations,” as he put it Thursday, may have incentive to stop fomenting so much trouble. Failure as Mr. Obama sees it means more war, more instability. He has been willing to gamble America’s relationship with Israel and his own presidency on that premise.

“Obama always saw the Iranian nuclear threat as a major security challenge that would lead to war if not controlled, and further proliferation if not prevented,” said Gary Samore, a former top arms control adviser to Mr. Obama who is now president of the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran.

“If we get a nuclear deal, it won’t solve the problem, because the current government in Iran will still be committed to acquiring a nuclear weapons capability,” he added. “But it would give the next president a much stronger basis to manage and delay the threat.”

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former C.I.A. analyst who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said a nuclear accord with Iran was all that remained of Mr. Obama’s dream of transformation. But Mr. Obama, he said, has misjudged Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and its president, Hassan Rouhani.

“A reading of the supreme leader or of Hassan Rouhani in their own words ought to tell you that there is a near-zero chance that an accord will diminish the revolutionary, religious hostility that these two men, the revolutionary elite, have for the United States,” he said.

If Mr. Obama does turn out to be right, Mr. Gerecht added, history will reward him. “If he is wrong, however, and this diplomatic process accelerates the nuclearization of the region, throws jet fuel on the war between the Sunnis and the Shia, and puts America into a much worse strategic position in the Middle East,” he said, “then history is likely to be harsh to Mr. Obama.”

R. Nicholas Burns, who was President George W. Bush’s lead negotiator on Iran, said Mr. Obama had embraced and enhanced a strategy his predecessor began. “We’ll have to judge him by the final result, but so far, this has been a successful effort,” he said. “A good deal could prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. A bad deal could end up empowering Iran, a defeat for him and the country.”

“In terms of legacy,” Mr. Burns added, “this is one of the two or three things that will determine it, for good or bad.”