As the clock ticks down on the 60-day deadline allotted to the US Congress to review the nuclear agreement between world powers and Iran, presented to them on July 19, think tanks and media outlets in Israel and the United States are closely following the distribution of votes between proponents and opponents of the agreement. Those opposing it are currently an assured simple majority in Congress. The Republicans control both the Senate and the House of Representatives. They all oppose the deal, and some Democrats have joined them. The seemingly unresolved issue is whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will manage to win over a sufficient number of senators and representatives to muster a two-thirds majority in each house. Such a majority is constitutionally required to overcome a presidential veto, which President Barack Obama has pledged to use following the expected “no” vote by a simple majority.

That said, at the epicenter of the campaign against the agreement, Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem, there is a growing realization that the prospects of garnering such a majority to overcome a presidential veto are nil. In fact, in the words of a senior official who asked that his name be withheld, “It’s inconceivable.” Despite this assessment, the official told Al-Monitor, the prime minister does not intend to ease the pressure on Congress. He wants to enlist the support of as many opponents to the deal as possible to obtain what he calls a “resounding moral majority,” even if it's not a “veto overruling majority.” According to the source, Netanyahu argues that this same moral majority is supposed to represent the broad opposition to the agreement among the American public, which according to recent poll results encompasses nearly two-thirds of US citizens.

According to a poll by Fox News, identified with the political right wing, 58% of respondents said they would reject the nuclear agreement with Iran if they were asked to vote on it in Congress, 31% said they would support it, and 10% said they didn’t know. The results of a Gallup poll were similar: 33% think Obama negotiated a good agreement, while 55% are dissatisfied with the way he handled himself vis-à-vis Iran.

Netanyahu stresses in conversations that the opposition in both houses of Congress is growing, and he is following American public opinion in his decision to persist. The moral validation for the battle he is waging against the president of the United States stems from his belief that Americans are concerned that the agreement increases the Iranian threat to the United States itself, not from an existential threat to the State of Israel. Netanyahu also stresses that unlike the Jewish public in the United States, the general public is no longer divided in its negative view of the “bad agreement” Obama signed.