With Senate Democrats locking down more support to prevent the two-thirds majority needed to block a nuclear deal with Iran, President Barack Obama is concentrating on another goal — picking off at least one Republican to support it.

He is down to one target: Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake.


Two weeks ago, Flake found himself surrounded by Democrats on Air Force Once headed to Africa, having joined Obama for his first trip to the continent while in office. The in-flight entertainment was obvious from the moment the trip was announced: a long, laborious discussion of the Iran deal.

Obama’s pursuit of Flake, a rock-ribbed fiscal conservative who’s broken with his party on foreign policy in the past, shows how far the president is willing to go to secure his legacy-defining nuclear agreement. Unlike most of his GOP colleagues, Flake is still undecided on the deal, and he indicated in a Tuesday interview there was still a possibility he could be a yes.

“An agreement this big, this important, you ought to look at all angles. And I’m trying to,” Flake said as he trudged to yet another Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iran. “There are certain parts of the agreement that are certainly better than the status quo. You have to look at it in the broader context of our foreign policy options in the region and not try to judge it against the ideal but against the alternative. It’s not an easy call.”

One thing Flake said he’s not buying, however, is the argument from Secretary of State John Kerry that war is the only alternative to letting the deal go forward: “Obviously that threat has to be out there, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case.”

Even though Obama needs only Democratic support to keep Congress from killing the deal — by upholding a veto of GOP legislation to disapprove of the agreement — he’d still like a Republican to bless the agreement with a measure of bipartisanship. He managed that with his stimulus package but failed when it came to Obamacare.

And by reaching out to Flake, it’s clear Obama is taking no chances with the deal even as a trio of Senate Democrats announced their support for the agreement on Tuesday.

Hoping to seize even more momentum before a long August recess, on Wednesday morning the administration will bring in Yukiya Amano, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, for a closed-door briefing with the Foreign Relations Committee and then give all senators a chance to question Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in the afternoon.

The president is hoping for a major boost out of those confabs: On Tuesday afternoon, Rep. Steve Israel of New York and two other prominent Jewish House Democrats announced their opposition to the deal, a blow to Obama’s hopes to start recess on a hot streak.

And while the president and other key administration members push Flake to back the deal, his senior colleague, John McCain (R-Ariz.), is actively trying to move him in the other direction. The two senators have spoken multiple times about the Iran deal, which McCain loathes.

“I hope he comes around to my position,” McCain said. But, he added: “Sen. Flake’s someone who makes up his mind on his own.”

Securing a veto-proof majority was always going to be a challenge for Republicans, and the growing chorus of Democratic support is only going to make it harder, particularly in the Senate where no Democrats are officially against the deal yet. Support from Flake would essentially put an end to speculation that Republican leaders could block the deal after Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Bill Nelson of Florida and Tim Kaine of Virginia all announced their support for the accord on Tuesday.

Those announcements followed a Tuesday meeting of 30 Democratic senators with all the ambassadors of the major global powers that negotiated the deal with Iran, organized by Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, the lead liaison for the White House’s operation to build support for the deal.

Durbin also organized a briefing last week with top State Department official Wendy Sherman, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes and Moniz.

“They’re positive,” Durbin said of the Democratic response to those sessions. Asked about polls showing brewing public opposition to the deal, Durbin responded: “When I voted against the Iraq War the public opinion polls were in favor of it. And what happened afterwards?”

Indeed, with those polls showing an erosion of public support for the deal and opponents vowing to make recess painful for undecided Democrats, Republicans say they are confident they can pass a resolution of disapproval in the Senate. Doing so would take 60 votes and a rebellion of at least six Democrats, possibly more if Flake ends up supporting the deal.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said his goal is to pass a resolution that would keep the president from lifting legislative sanctions on Iran rather than a failed approval resolution meant to embarrass the president. But his chief vote-counter admitted that Republicans don’t have unanimous opposition for the deal within the caucus, a nod to Flake’s indecision as well as other Republicans like Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

“We don’t know that [there’s unanimous GOP opposition]. But we’re checking,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas.

On Tuesday, McConnell offered his hopes for serious, sober consideration of the resolution in September, and he pressed for a Senate debate with all 100 senators and literally nothing else going on in the Senate that day to focus everyone’s attention on the matter. But by then almost all minds will be made up and it’s likely to be crystal clear whether the GOP has the votes to block the deal.

What may not be clear is whether the deal will have any bipartisan support in Congress. Flake said he’s in no rush to come to a decision — so he can expect plenty of continued personal attention from the president and his team. And Flake insisted that he’s not on an island; there are other Republicans who could break the administration’s way, too.

“There are others that have still not declared. I don’t think I’m alone,” Flake said. “We have 60 days. I think we ought to take as much of it as we need to determine whether or not it’s worthy of support.”