Time is needed for sanctions and acts of diplomacy to take full effect, and in spite of the need for in these matters, it is time Obama and the United States has. Chait was impressed:
Obama’s challenge is essentially to use his advantage as sitting president to bolster his standing to make the more dovish argument. His news conference offered the most crystallized version of what is likely to be his foreign-policy argument through the election. Obama repeatedly dismissed Republican attacks as bellicose political rhetoric. He argued that the demands he do more to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon generally dissolve, upon inspection, into endorsements of policies he is implementing, like sanctions and using the threat of an attack as leverage.
Obama, probably without planning to, summarized his whole message when a reporter asked him to respond to Romney's comparison of him to Jimmy Carter. "Good luck tonight," he said, deflating Romney's entire critique as so much political hot air. There is an element of professorial condescension at work here. His goal here is to disqualify his opponents, not by positioning himself as stronger, but by positioning himself as smarter.