The Obama administration has its work cut out for it justifying a weak nuclear deal with Iran to Congress. After months of bashing critics of his appeasement of Tehran, and in particular Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, the president has realized that selling the country on a new Iran-centric policy in the Middle East is going to require something a bit more nuanced. Thus, he has turned back to the same tactic he used while seeking reelection, a Jewish charm offensive designed to at one and the same time disarm his critics and to position his defenders as part of the pro-Israel consensus rather than among those trying to destroy it. The person tasked with this tough brief is Vice President Joe Biden who spoke last night to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His message was to both reassure friends of Israel that Obama has their back and to defend the Iran deal as a good idea. It remains to be seen how much credibility Biden has left as someone who claims “to love Israel.” But Biden’s main argument in favor of the Iran deal makes the administration look even weaker and more negligent than even some of its harshest critics have alleged. And it’s one that makes the bipartisan compromise about congressional ratification of the deal seem even less of a genuine check on the administration.The last time the administration tried a charm offensive with the pro-Israel community, it worked. In 2012 all President Obama needed to do was to cease picking fights (at least for a while) with Netanyahu, ramp up security cooperation with Israel, and toughen his rhetoric against Iran. But playing the same trick while senior officials continue to threaten to isolate Israel at the United Nations and defending a deal that, at the very least, makes Iran a threshold nuclear power isn’t going to be quite so easy.

But Biden isn’t afraid to try, so in his remarks last night he claimed that there was nothing wrong with Israel being worried about the threat from Iran. Indeed, he even hinted that the administration was prepared to contemplate war with Iran should it try to “race to a bomb.”

While those words may have comforted some Jewish Democrats desperate for reassurance, they are utterly disingenuous. The Obama foreign-policy team has spent the last two years telling the Israelis and those Americans who are worried about the drift toward appeasement of Iran to shut up. Biden’s anodyne statements about Israel’s right to wring its hands as the United States cozies up to a vicious and aggressive terrorist-supporting Islamist state are meaningless. So, too, is any talk about the U.S. ever contemplating the use of force against Iran. The administration has already discarded all of its economic and political leverage over Tehran in its reckless pursuit of a nuclear deal at virtually any price. The notion that Washington would be willing to discard the fruits of its diplomatic surrenders just because Iran was cheating on the nuclear deal or getting closer to a bomb is absurd and flies in the face of everything we’ve learned about Obama’s attitude toward the issue.

But that worthless pep talk aside, the real news coming out of Biden’s speech was the justification he gave for the nuclear deal. Aside from the requisite denunciation of its critics as “not getting it” (and by that he meant Netanyahu as well as those in Congress who are equally concerned about what the pact portends), Biden went further in delineating the danger from Iran should the agreement fall through.

Instead of claiming, as the president and other defenders have done, that Iran is nowhere close to a weapon and that the deal will ensure that the U.S. will have time to stop them if they attempt to “break out” to a bomb, Biden took a different tack. In the course of knocking down the detailed criticisms of the deal, he said this:

Some have said that because some of the constraints in this deal expire over time, this deal “paves” Iran’s path to a bomb. Let’s get something straight so we don’t kid each other. They already have paved a path to a bomb’s worth of material. Iran could get there now if they walked away in two to three months without a deal.

Biden says the deal increases that breakout time to a year. But let’s remember that Obama and Biden have been in power for over six years. It has primarily been on their watch that Iran has made so much progress on their nuclear project.

Nor do Biden’s claims that Iran has abided by the 2013 interim deal have much credibility. As our Seth Mandel noted yesterday, contrary to Biden’s assertions about holding Tehran accountable, it’s already clear that Iran is continuing its illicit nuclear work in contravention to their promises. The argument used by both Obama and Biden that Israeli predictions about the interim agreement were wrong is misleading. Given the bad intelligence the U.S. has on Iran and the lack of rigorous inspections (something that will continue even after the deal is signed according to Iran’s supreme leader), the administration has no idea how much cheating is going on. Moreover, if the Israelis would prefer the interim deal to stay in place rather than the proposed final pact, that is only a measure of how weak the new deal Obama has struck with Iran truly is.

Biden’s talk of war should also be understood as a not-so-subtle reminder of the straw man argument the administration has been using to defend its disastrous policy. The alternative to appeasement remains strengthened sanctions and tough diplomacy. War is only an option if, thanks to Obama’s drive for détente with Iran, it has gotten so close to a bomb that nothing short of air strikes will slow them down.

These not-so-reassuring reassurances should figure into the thinking of Congress as it prepares to pass a bill requiring a vote on a final Iran deal under terms that provide little accountability and allow it to pass with only 34 votes rather than the two-thirds that would normally be required for a treaty. The administration has put the West in a weak position and now claims that accepting that weakness is the alternative to war. That is not a recipe for Western security or that of an Israel that remains in the cross hairs of an Iranian regime that Obama and Biden think wants to “get right with the world.”