Secretary of State John Kerry
Many Republicans always regard diplomacy as capitulation, and all the more so when the diplomacy is being practiced by President Barack Obama and his administration. Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, for instance,
claimed that Iran sees the new deal as "their window of opportunity to negotiate with an administration that has shown that it really doesn’t have a lot of the intestinal fortitude that other administrations have had." (Intestinal fortitude = bombings, apparently.) If the Republican view that diplomacy is useless and weak is true, though, we're in real trouble. After all, if you've paid any attention whatsoever to recent history, bombing things turns out not to work real well, either.
But whatever the merits of pure diplomacy vs. pure bombing, Secretary of State John Kerry made clear Sunday morning that diplomacy is not an eternal promise of peace:
"The president maintains as commander-in-chief and has said specifically that he has not taken that threat off the table," Kerry said on CBS's "Face the Nation." [...]
"Iran will have to prove that its program is really peaceful," he said. "There's nothing built on trust. We're not sitting here pretending that Iran is going to suddenly turn over a new leaf. We have to prove it."
Clearly Obama does not
want to bomb Iran, but unlike some people and parties, he's capable of holding multiple possibilities in his head at the same time.
As for the American people, recent polling shows that diplomacy is a popular option.