Politics

Obama evokes JFK to sell the Iran deal

President Barack Obama’s speech on the nuclear deal with Iran opened with comparisons to JFK. Michael Reynolds / EPA

By Eric Levenson @ejleven

August 5, 2015

2 minutes to read

President Barack Obama explicitly evoked John F. Kennedy’s historic nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union in 1963 as part of his pitch to sell the Iran deal on Wednesday.

The international agreement with Iran “builds on this tradition of strong principled, diplomacy,’’ Obama said, referring to Kennedy’s speech.

Back in June 1963, amid high tensions with the Soviet Union, Kennedy announced in a speech at American University that he would agree to negotiations with the USSR to a ban on some nuclear tests. That agreement would later become the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, which was signed that August.

The speech was notable not just for its plan to deal with the USSR, but as a broader argument for diplomacy and deal-making.

“Too many of us think [peace] is impossible. Too many think it is unreal,’’ Kennedy said then. “But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view.’’

Obama’s speech on Wednesday, also located at American University, cited Kennedy in making the case for the international community’s nuclear treaty with Iran.

“Fifty-two years ago, President Kennedy, at the height of the Cold War, addressed this same university on the subject of peace,’’ Obama said. “Strength, in his view, included powerful armed forces and a willingness to stand up for our values around the world. But he rejected the prevailing attitude among some foreign policy circles that equated security with a perpetual war footing.’’

Obama said Kennedy had a “different vision’’ than the foreign policy leaders of the day.

“Instead he promised strong principled American leadership on behalf of what he called, ‘a practical and attainable peace,’’’ he said, quoting Kennedy. “A peace ‘based not on a sudden revolution in human nature, but on a gradual evolution in human institutions. On a series of concrete actions and effective agreements.’’’

Obama joins a long line of politicians who have referenced Kennedy, from Bill Clinton to Ted Cruz.

Obama spent much of the rest of his speech addressing critics who have said the Iran deal is a “historic mistake’’ that will embolden the country. Obama said that the world was far more dangerous back then than it is today, and said the Iran deal was “not even close’’ to being a tough call.