AP Photo Three more Senate Democrats back Iran deal The momentum continues for President Barack Obama.

Senate Democrats who've been wobbly on the Iran deal are breaking President Barack Obama's way.

Three key Democratic holdouts threw their support behind the nuclear accord with Iran on Thursday — one day after Obama clinched enough votes to guarantee Congress can’t kill his agreement.


Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Mark Warner of Virginia and Cory Booker of New Jersey formally announced their backing. All three said the deal isn't flawless but beats the alternative.

“It is not a perfect deal, nor is this deal about trust,” Heitkamp said Thursday. “It’s about making sure we have in place the strongest mechanisms possible to accomplish our goal by holding Iran to the most sweeping concessions about its nuclear program it has ever made.”

Warner struck a similar tone, saying he still had “several areas of concern” about the nuclear agreement reached by six world powers and Iran in July. Still, “the choice I ultimately had to make was between accepting an imperfect deal or facing the serious ramifications if Congress rejected a deal that has the support of the rest of the world.”

The Virginia senator also made clear he would like changes to the agreement, including ensuring that Congress will still be able to impose sanctions against Iran that target its “numerous other destabilizing activities including support for terrorism.”

Booker, who's faced pressure from the Jewish community in New Jersey to oppose the deal, said his decision was a choice between “two imperfect, dangerous and uncertain options.”

“Left with these two choices, I nonetheless believe it is better to support a deeply flawed deal, for the alternative is worse,” Booker wrote in a 3,395-word essay. “Thus, I will vote in support of the deal. But the United States must recognize that to make this deal work, we must be more vigilant than ever in fighting Iranian aggression.”





The backlash against Booker began almost instantly. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, an influential Jewish leader in New Jersey whose relationship with Booker dates nearly 25 years, criticized Booker’s “troubling and tragic choice” to back the deal and called his reasoning “riddled with logical inconsistencies.”

“How on earth could he participate in making Iran’s nuclear program kosher amid their never-ending pledge to carry out a second holocaust?” Boteach said in a statement.

Former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who had been vocally rallying opposition against the Iran deal, had been scheduled to hold an AIPAC-hosted news conference later Thursday to pressure Booker to oppose the agreement.

The Obama administration’s nuclear deal became all but sure to survive the Republican-led Congress when Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) announced Wednesday that she would back the agreement. That meant 34 votes were in favor of the deal, enough to sustain a veto from Obama, should he issue one. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California has said repeatedly that Democrats in her chamber would also protect the agreement.

