All Eyes on Congress for Showdown on Iran

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Two days after the historic deal in Vienna between the U.S., six world powers and Iran over its nuclear program, the focus has shifted to Washington.

Now both President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu want to persuade Congress to either accept or reject the deal that's already begun shifting the Middle East landscape.

Curing an hour-long press conference, Obama defended his deal.

"With this deal, we cut off every one of Iran's pathways to a nuclear program, a nuclear weapons program. And Iran's nuclear program will be under severe limits for many years," he said.

In Israel, Netanyahu launched a U.S. media blitz against the agreement.

"I think the inspection regime is full of holes because instead of having instant inspections say within 24 hours, Iran has 24 days to open up suspect sites. Twenty-four days! Imagine giving a drug dealer 24 days' notice before you check the premises? This isn't gonna work," Netanyahu said. "It's like, you know, it's North Korea really."

Obama says the deal with Iran was a risk he had to take. But Israelis on the front lines of that risk are skeptical. Seventy-four percent say the deal won't stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.

"It's a bad deal because sooner or later, it's going to reach us," one Israeli man told CBN News.
 
"(What) the world doesn't realize is that the Islamic people, they want to take over the world," an Israeli woman said.
 
A third Israeli man told CBN News, "No because Iran is keeping saying that Israel and the States and Europe has to be destroyed and everything has to be Islamic.  So, they're going to continue to doing everything." 
 
On the streets of Tehran, the people celebrated. But Iranian born Middle East expert Menashe Amir said he expects Iran will cheat on the agreement, which opens the doors for Iranian nuclear scientists.

"The fact that the Iranian scientists have the permission to continue their research means that Iran … will continue to find better ways of enhancing its nuclear program [and] after six years or eight years they will begin in a very fast way to make the bomb," Amir told CBN News.
 
Because of this, he says it will cause a Middle East nuclear arms race.

"We are talking today about a united Arab forces, which will include Saudis, Egyptians and other countries, and they may make a united cooperation for making the nuclear bomb or having the protection of the Pakistanis who have the first Islamic bomb," Amir said.
 
Besides a nuclear arms race, some compare the $150 billion in sanctions relief to Iran, the world's number one state sponsor of terrorism, to a jihadist stimulus bill that will pour fuel on an already burning Middle East fire.