Deeper Mideast Aspirations Seen in Nuclear Deal With Iran

WASHINGTON — As he struggles to sell his nuclear deal with Iran to resistant Republicans and Democrats in Congress, President Obama describes it in the narrowest possible terms, as a limited transaction in which Tehran gives up the bomb in return for sanction relief.

In a conference call with liberal groups on Thursday night, he stuck to his talking points: The principal danger is if the Iranians “get a nuclear weapon, which is exactly what this deal prevents.”

What the president and his aides do not talk about these days — for fear of further antagonizing lawmakers on Capitol Hill who have cast Iran as the ultimate enemy of the United States — are their grander ambitions for a deal they hope could open up relations with Tehran and be part of a transformation in the Middle East.

Administration officials say Mr. Kerry is hopeful that once the nuclear accord is solidified, he will be able to begin talking with the Iranians about ending their support for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. “Russia and Iran are the two biggest supporters of the regime” in Syria, said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because public comment had not been authorized. Mr. Obama has already spoken to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, about removing Mr. Assad, the official said.

“There may be an opportunity with Iran as the deal is implemented to pursue a similar conversation,” the official said.

In public, Mr. Obama has played down expectations that the Iran deal could lead to a resolution of the Syrian conflict, saying in a recent White House news conference that Iran was just “one of the players” in the conflict and that he did not “anticipate any time in the near future restored normal diplomatic relations with Iran.”

But the official said the administration would be open to talking with Iran about its battles in Iraq against the Islamic State as the United States fights its own parallel war against the terrorist group.

More broadly, Mr. Obama and his top aides see the possibility of a new equilibrium between Sunni and Shiite groups in the region, a potential shift in alliances that worries America’s closest Arab allies, like Saudi Arabia.

In a press briefing at the White House on Thursday, Josh Earnest, the press secretary, said of the deal, “We’re hopeful that it might result in some kind of change emanating from Iran, but we’re certainly not counting on it.”

Despite White House hopes, many experts say it is naïve to expect that Iran, which provides critical military support to Mr. Assad as well as to the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, would be receptive to the administration’s overtures.

“I don’t see any evidence that Iran is increasingly disposed toward facilitating a negotiated solution to the Syrian crisis,” Frederic C. Hof, a former senior State Department official in the Obama administration and now an expert on Syria at the Atlantic Council, told reporters this week. “On the contrary, I think Iran and Hezbollah have been engaged in some very intensive consultations centering on the question of just how much of Assad’s Syria they will defend.”

Before his fight for the deal in Congress, Mr. Obama was far more open about his ultimate goals. In an interview in The Atlantic in March 2014, he said that a nuclear agreement with Iran was a good idea, even if the regime remained unchanged. But an agreement could do far more than that, he said:

“If, on the other hand, they are capable of changing; if, in fact, as a consequence of a deal on their nuclear program those voices and trends inside of Iran are strengthened, and their economy becomes more integrated into the international community, and there’s more travel and greater openness, even if that takes a decade or 15 years or 20 years, then that’s very much an outcome we should desire,” he said.

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