CNN's Fareed Zakaria said on Thursday that President Obama "desperately" wants a legacy-sealing nuclear deal with Iran.
"Does he want this too much?" CNN host Erin Burnett asked about the president.
"I think that there is an element of him clearly that desperately wants to bring Iran in from the cold," Zakaria said.
"He wants to be the one who does it," Burnett said.
Critics of a nuclear deal with Iran have long contended that administration officials were too eager to strike a deal. Eagerness, they said, would be exploited for concessions by Iranian negotiators.
Since talks began several years ago, the United States has compromised its commitment to dismantle Iran's nuclear infrastructure and end its enrichment of fissile material, among other concessions.
After describing the president's hunger for a deal, Zakaria rushed to assure Burnett that the president was "deathly serious" about Iranian nuclear proliferation.