Obama puts odds of Iran deal at 'less than 50-50' The president told senators at a gathering Tuesday that he won’t accept a bad nuclear deal with Iran.

President Barack Obama pegged the chances of a nuclear agreement with Iran at “less than 50-50,” even as he worked to reassure Senate Democrats that he won’t accept a bad deal, according to a U.S. senator who attended a gathering at the White House.

During something of a working cocktail party Tuesday night, the president sounded a fresh note of pessimism as the nuclear talks in Vienna missed yet another self-imposed deadline — and as his administration has sought to refute accusations that it is desperate for a deal.


“He said the chances, he thought, were less than 50-50 at this point and that he wouldn’t agree to something he thought was weak or unenforceable,” Sen. Dick Durbin said in an interview with POLITICO on Wednesday. “But if he comes up with an agreement and it meets his standards, he wanted us to take an honest look at it and not prejudge.”

Over drinks and hors d’oeuvres in the State Dining Room, Obama also discussed a range of Democratic priorities with his Senate colleagues, including an upcoming fight over spending bills, climate change and the latest court victory for Obamacare, according to senators who attended. The invitation came just weeks after a hard-fought legislative battle over trade policy that frayed relations between the president and his congressional allies.

Obama spoke at length about Iran, senators said. This wasn’t the first time Obama has said the odds are against a deal, but his remarks reflect the White House’s message to both the Iranians and domestic opponents that U.S. negotiators would sooner walk away than back away from Obama’s core goals.

On their own, Democrats in the Senate can shield an eventual pact from actions by congressional opponents, and the president urged his party to ignore naysayers.

“He took us back to what the framework was when the initial agreement was announced in Lausanne,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said Tuesday night as he prepared to board a bus parked in front of the White House’s Northwest Gate with other senators headed back to the Capitol. “He said, ‘Don’t get nervous, don’t get concerned about statements by the supreme leader, about statements in the press. I am not going to sign a deal where we can’t assure that we’ve blocked all pathways to a bomb for Iran.’ I found that very reassuring.”

While Obama “covered every hot topic there was,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), when it came to Iran, “he wanted to make it clear to us that if it’s a bad deal, there’s no deal.”

Obama on Wednesday discussed Iran during a video conference with his national security team, Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, and the U.S. negotiating team in Vienna, according to a White House readout.

The Obama administration, especially Kerry, has worked in recent days to dismiss suggestions that desperation will prompt the president to sign a deal — any deal — for the sake of a legacy. Officials shrugged off a July 7 deadline and are now downplaying the significance of July 9, even though that date has concrete consequences: Congress will have 60 days instead of just 30 to consider the pact if it doesn’t receive it by midnight Thursday.

But Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the president seemed “not at all” concerned about the implications of giving Congress more time to scrutinize the deal in a meeting that Cardin characterized as “somewhat social, somewhat businesslike.”