Throughout our negotiations with Iran, we were clear-eyed about Iran’s status as the world’s foremost state-sponsor of terror, and we resolved not to let the regime off the hook. In fact, from sponsoring terrorist activity to human rights abuses, Iran continues to pursue destabilizing activities in the Middle East region that the U.S. and our allies continue to monitor and address.

So why did the U.S. spend nearly two years negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran? 

It’s a fair question with an important answer: As destabilizing as Iran’s regional activities are, they would be exponentially more dangerous with a nuclear weapon. And now that we’ve taken a nuclear-armed Iran off the table, we can ratchet up the pressure on its destabilizing activities—including its support for terrorism.

We are committed to countering Iran’s actions that threaten our national security interests and those of our allies, especially Israel. Here's how: 

Strengthening the Defense and Security of Israel:

The United States and Israel have forged a deep and enduring bond since the United States became the first country to recognize Israel in 1948. The close engagement—at all levels—between the two countries reflects how our histories, interests, and values are so deeply intertwined between our two peoples. President Obama knows that Israel’s national security is paramount and that is why, under his leadership, the United States has provided an unprecedented level of support to Israel since he took office. 

Under President Obama, we are helping Israel address new and complex security threats to ensure Israel maintains its Qualitative Military Edge (QME), or its ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat through superior military capability and means. Here’s what that looks like:

Intensifying Security Cooperation with Gulf States:

For the past 70 years, the United States has maintained a core national security interest in the security and the stability of our allies in the Gulf region – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Bahrain. We’ve long cooperated on confronting the extraordinary challenges posed by ISIL, al Qaeda, the Assad regime’s war in Syria, and Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region. 

As President Obama has said, we will continue to maintain a strong force posture in the region to deter aggression; bolster the security of our regional friends and allies; ensure the freedom of navigation of international waterways and the free flow of energy to world markets; and address nefarious actors that seek to sow the seeds of instability. Here’s what that looks like: 

Maintaining Restrictions on Iranian Missile and Arms Activity:

Under the Iran deal, Iran will receive relief from nuclear-related sanctions only after it has implemented key measures to roll back its nuclear program and enhance transparency. However, the Iran deal also includes additional arms and missile restrictions for a significant period of time: five years for the arms embargo and eight years for missile restrictions. What’s more, the United States and international community will maintain a broad set of multilateral and unilateral tools, including sanctions, to continue to restrict Iranian conventional arms and missile-related activity. Here’s what that looks like: 

The Bottom Line:

The nuclear deal is an element of our broader efforts to confront and counter Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region. The United States has long worked with its allies and partners to address Iran’s support for terrorism and regional militancy—and the Iran deal does nothing to weaken our resolve to continue to push back and defend our interests and friends. By neutralizing the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, we are better positioned than ever to work with Israel and other partners to promote regional stability and advance our mutual security. 

In a letter to Congressman Jerrold Nadler, President Obama laid out exactly what our efforts to counter Iran would look like and how they are strengthened by the implementation of the Iran deal. 

As I have underscored repeatedly, it is imperative that, even as we effectively cut off Iran's pathways to a nuclear weapon through implementation of the JCPOA, we take steps to ensure we and our allies and partners are more capable than ever to deal with Iran's destabilizing activities and support for terrorism.

President Obama

Read his entire letter here: 

Colin Kahl is the Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to the Vice President.

This morning, Congressman Seth Moulton sent the following message to the White House email list to share why, as a combat veteran, he supports the Iran deal. You can learn more about the historic deal here: http://ift.tt/1G7YmDs

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I was in the first company of Marines to enter Baghdad in 2003.

 

As a combat veteran, I know the cost of war. It is something I still carry with me today in the U.S. House of Representatives, where I have the privilege of representing the people of northeast Massachusetts. And I am reminded of it every time the questions of war and peace come before Congress.

In September, we will face that question once more when members of Congress consider whether or not to support the Iran nuclear agreement.

During the Iraq war, I saw the weapons and influence of the Iranian regime, and I deeply understand the threat Iran poses to America and our allies like Israel. That is why it is so crucial that the international community works together to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

After careful deliberation, I believe the Iran nuclear deal does just that. You can investigate the deal yourself here.

Let me be clear: I do not, and we should not, trust Iran to comply with this agreement. But this deal is not based on trust. It's based on enforceable verification measures that are comprehensive enough to be effective.

 

Inspections will also give us greater intelligence on Iran than we have today.

I respect that some, including a few veterans, may disagree and feel that there is the possibility of a “better deal” out there. To them I say, what's the alternative?

You may hear of two: increasing our sanctions regime or pursuing a military option. Here's why those are just not acceptable:

Increasing sanctions — let alone maintaining them — would only work if the international coalition behind the sanctions holds together. But our allies have been clear: They agreed to sanctions to force Iran to the negotiating table to secure a deal like the one we now have. If we walk away from that deal, we walk away alone.

The other option, taking military action against Iran, would once again imperil the lives of Americans to achieve much less than this deal achieves by diplomatic means. Military action would only set Iran's nuclear program back a few years at most, reaffirm their pursuit of a nuclear weapon, and drive the program underground.

Both these options leave us worse off than we are under the terms of the Iran deal. The fact is there is no “better deal” that will prevent Iran from building a bomb.

No deal is perfect, especially one negotiated among adversaries. But, in our ongoing confrontation with a great threat to world peace, we have found the best available option by peaceful means rather than pursuing a worse option through war.

 

It is for these reasons that I support the Iran deal.

And if you read it for yourself, I feel you will too.

Thank you.

America is at its strongest when we work together to build prosperity that all of us contribute to and share. We are our best when the working men and women who are engines of economic growth are true partners in industry and innovation, with a robust voice in their workplaces. That’s why, last week, President Obama announced his intention to host a White House Summit on Worker Voice on October 7.

Now, we need your help finding workers, employers, and organizers from across the country to join this conversation.

Our economy has come a long way from the economic crisis we faced when President Obama took office. American businesses have created 13 million jobs over the past 65 months, the longest consecutive streak of job growth on record. But we have more work to do to help middle-class wages grow and adapt to the changing nature of work in the 21st century. The Summit on Worker Voice will provide a historic opportunity to bring together a diverse group of leaders – including workers, employers, unions, organizers, and other advocates and experts – to explore ways to ensure that hardworking Americans are both driving our nation’s economic resurgence and also sharing in the benefits of the growth that they are helping to create. 

We know that many of you are doing great work across the country to prove this time-tested principle – that as employers, workers, and communities, we thrive when we stand together and support each other. We need the voices of hardworking Americans who stand up for better conditions in their workplaces. We need the voice of forward-thinking employers who are rejecting the old “us v. them” approach to their employees, instead finding win-win solutions by listening to them. We need the voices of tech innovators building new tools to allow workers to join together to make their voices heard.

You know, we don’t have all the answers here in Washington. We will be more successful in creating shared prosperity if we put our heads together to find new ways to help workers raise their voices together. That’s why we’re pleased to announce that we’ll be accepting nominations for people from across the country to attend the Summit in Washington, D.C. on October 7. Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in the conversation with senior leaders from business, unions, and government who share their commitment to fairer, more productive, and more prosperous workplaces. And we will be counting on attendees to learn from each other too, and to take those lessons back to their communities to make even more of a difference.

We’re looking for nominees who are making a difference for worker voice in their communities. Do you know someone who is bringing coworkers together to discuss common workplace issues, or who is inspiring workers to speak up? Do you know an employer who has taken great lengths to listen to their employees and learn what really matters to them? If so, nominate them to attend the Summit on Worker Voice.

There are limited spaces for attending the Summit at the White House, but there will be many other opportunities for joining the conversation. We’ll continue to provide updates on the blog about how you can join in.

In this week's address, the President spoke to the economic progress that our country has made, from 13 million new jobs created over the past five and a half years, to 17 states raising the minimum wage. Congress needs to do its part to continue to help grow the economy, but instead left town last month with a great deal undone.

Congress failed to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank, which enjoys bipartisan support and is tasked solely with creating American jobs by growing exports. And most pressingly, the Republican Congress failed to uphold their most basic responsibility to fund the government, leaving them only a few weeks once they return to pass a budget, or shut down the government for the second time in two years.

The President made clear that Congress needs to get to work on behalf of the American people and reach a budget agreement that relieves the harmful sequester cuts and keeps our economy growing.

Transcript | mp4 | mp3

The President’s Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) is dedicated to enabling a new era of medicine through research, technology, and policies that will lead to the development of individualized, tailored treatments for patients. This vision will allow everyone to become an active participant in scientific discovery – furthering an open and inclusive model for better recruitment of and partnership with research participants. Why is this so important? We have seen incredible innovations in health care, and central to many of those advances have been people participating in research. PMI will provide the foundation that allows all Americans to sign up and share their data in a safe and responsible way, leading to scientific breakthroughs that will ultimately pave the way to better options for patients.

And that’s why we want to hear from YOU.

In July, the White House celebrated nine remarkable Champions of Change in Precision Medicine and highlighted the efforts of organizations committed to providing more individuals with easier, more efficient access to their health data.

Hear more about the importance of this initiative from nearly a dozen researchers and advocates here.

Moving precision medicine forward must be a team effort. We need all sectors to work together. We need people to actively engage in research and voluntarily choose to share their data with responsible researchers who are working to understand health and disease. We need healthcare providers to share their insight and help translate new findings into better care. And we need a strong, secure, and nimble infrastructure for health data that protects privacy, ensures security and facilitates new research models. Leaders in healthcare must continue to work with the brightest minds from the technology sector on designing and testing new methods for opening up patient data and allowing individuals to donate their data to research. Over the course of this administration, we’ve seen incredible advances in health technology, including widespread adoption of electronic health records. Yet, there is still more work to do. Too many people are unable to access, share, or move their health data easily.

That’s why we’re looking to a broad range of stakeholders to learn about new or expanded initiatives and programs aimed at enabling new ways to improve health and treat disease – and ways to use this information to inform our precision medicine efforts going forward.

We know of exciting work in each of the key areas listed below, and are looking for additional examples of these types of efforts.  These initiatives could include:

• New approaches for deploying precision medicine into patient care to improve health.
• Exciting new ways to engage patients, participants, and partners in research, and get the word out about PMI, including through the use of novel technologies.
• The deployment of innovative ways of including historically excluded and underserved populations in research.
• The development of robust APIs in electronic health record systems that can support patients accessing their clinical data and donating it for research.
• The creation of workable models of information sharing across organizational boundaries with appropriate privacy and security protections.
• Technology to support the storage and analysis of large amounts of data, with strong security safeguards.
• Novel analytics to help combine diverse data sets with appropriate privacy and security protections to answer precision medicine questions.
• New solutions for security issues in building large research data sets.
• Steps to increase the number of high quality data scientists and technologists working in healthcare.
• The development of grand challenges, competitions, and prizes to foster innovation.

Please share any new activities that support these goals or others that advance precision medicine here by 5 PM ET on September 21, 2015. With support from patients, research participants, researchers, providers, and private sector innovators, we can make precision medicine a reality. We need your creativity, on-the-ground experience, and enthusiasm to realize the promise of delivering individually tailored treatments to patients. Visit the White House Precision Medicine website to share your experience and help with this important initiative. We’re listening.

Stephanie Devaney is Project Manager for the Precision Medicine Initiative.

 

 

 

Last week, we took you behind the scenes of some of the summer's most momentous White House moments. This week, we'll preview some of the exciting events on the President's schedule in the weeks to come.

We know that when it comes to action on climate change, some of the best work is happening in small towns and big cities across the country. 

Earlier this year, local leaders in Fort Collins, Colorado, unanimously adopted some of the most aggressive goals in the nation to reduce community greenhouse gas emissions: 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 80 percent by 2030, which would put the city on a path to be carbon neutral by 2050.  And in Salt Lake City, Utah, community leaders have put forward the “Sustainable Salt Lake – Plan 2015” that reflects a broad and ambitious agenda to protect its city’s resources, enhance local assets, and establish a path toward greater resiliency and vitality for the community.

But we also know that local resources are often stretched thin, particularly in the low-income communities that need help the most. The third U.S. National Climate Assessment noted that socioeconomic disparities can exacerbate the vulnerability of certain populations, including low-income communities and some communities of color, due in part to limited capacity and resources necessary to prepare and adapt. For example, sea level rise poses the greatest risk to those who live in low-lying neighborhoods on the coast – communities that are often home to vulnerable populations. Rates of asthma – which may be exacerbated by climate change – among African American children are more than double the rates of white children, and Hispanic children are nearly twice as likely as white children to be hospitalized for asthma. 

That’s why, last month, the Administration announced Resilience AmeriCorps, a first-of-its-kind effort to support local resilience-building efforts.  The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have partnered with The Rockefeller Foundation and Cities of Service to place Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) members in communities to provide capacity building and technical support for climate resilience. Through the program, VISTAs will provide much needed capacity for communities to do things like develop climate preparedness plans, build volunteer networks, and take advantage of the resilience tools available through our Climate Resilience Toolkit.

Today, we are thrilled to share the announce of the cities selected for the Resilience AmeriCorps pilot program: Anchorage, Alaska; Boulder, Colorado; Chicago, Illinois; El Paso, Texas; Minot, North Dakota; New Orleans, Louisiana; Norfolk, Virginia; Phoenix, Arizona; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.  

Today’s announcement responds to a key recommendation of the State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience. Last fall, the Task Force told us that local jurisdictions could greatly benefit from focused climate resilience and preparedness expertise provided by programs such as those established by CNCS. Resilience AmeriCorps members will help local leaders in these cities as they plan for and address the impacts of extreme weather events and other climate-related risks while also helping local governments and communities develop the programs, relationships, and capacity needed to support greater community resilience. 

With cities, states, and tribes already confronting the costly impacts of climate change, the Administration remains determined in working hand-in-hand with communities as they develop smart strategies and stronger partnerships for building climate resilience.

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Today, the White House is launching a new Tumblr account called “Letters to President Obama,” where we'll highlight letters that Americans have written to the President. Follow along here.

Earlier this morning, Natoma Canfield — a cancer survivor from Ohio — sent the following message to the White House email list, sharing what happened when she wrote the President a letter encouraging him to “stay focused” in his efforts to reform America's health care system.

Didn't get the email? Sign up for email updates here.

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In December of 2009, I was a 50-year-old divorced woman, self-employed, and struggling to support myself and pay for my health insurance.

But in 1995, I'd had a very small bout with breast cancer — carcinoma in situ — which meant the insurance companies would forever see me as a woman with cancer. And that meant I had to pay more for my insurance.

My rates kept going up until I couldn't pay for my insurance any longer. I sure tried — I cut back everything, but nothing made a difference. I had to cancel.

In a last-ditch effort, desperate to let someone know my plight, I wrote President Obama a letter straight from my heart. I shared my story with him and told him how much people like me needed his help. And he actually read it!

A few months later, however, my fears came true. In March of 2010, I passed out at work, and found out soon after that I had a rare type of leukemia — acute lymphoblastic leukemia with the Philadelphia chromosome, to be specific.

I went to the Cleveland Clinic and was placed in a great program on their leukemia floor, where I would fight for my life. While I was there, my sister Connie Anderson was asked to introduce the President at an event in Strongsville, Ohio.

Then one day, the President sent me a note, then another — and even called me on the phone. I couldn't believe it. Connie and my brother Ken were able to go to the signing of the Affordable Care Act, and later I finally got to meet the President myself in Parma, Ohio.

I really believe all of the excitement helped keep me alive. And today, I'm happy to say that I'm cancer-free.

Of course, I can't begin to thank the President enough for the Affordable Care Act. During the fight to pass the law, he said that he carried my story with him every day, as a reminder of what the Act would mean for people all across our country. He later decided to frame the letter, which is now hanging up outside the Oval Office.

As the President has said, “because of this law, there are other Americans — other sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers — who will not have to hang their fortunes on chance. These are the Americans for whom we passed this law.”

I'm so grateful to have a President who truly cares about the people that he serves.

Natoma Canfield
Medina, Ohio

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To see some more of the letters that people across America have written to President Obama, follow our “Letters to President Obama” Tumblr account here.