President Obama issued a stern warning to Iran Wednesday, saying time is running out on efforts to find a peaceful solution to the international outcry generated by Iran’s nuclear program.
“The window for solving this issue diplomatically is shrinking,” Obama said at a White House appearance with British Prime Minister David Cameron. “I am determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”
The president urged Iran to “walk through this door that we are offering them” and engage in talks with world leaders over dismantling its nuclear program or face “even worse consequences” than the sanctions that the United States and its allies have already imposed.
“Nothing is off the table,” added Cameron, who had just emerged from a two-hour meeting with Obama in the Oval Office.
Even as he was urging Iran to enter into negotiations over its weapons program, Obama warned that Tehran must approach any talks with the intention of acting to address international concerns.
“In the past there has been a tendency for Iran in these negotiations … to delay, to stall, to do a lot of talking but not actually move the ball forward,” he said. “We will do everything we can to resolve this diplomatically but ultimately we’ve got to have somebody on the other side of the table who is taking this seriously and I hope that the Iranian regime understands that.”
Apart from Iran, Obama and Cameron used their one-on-one meeting to discuss the war in Afghanistan and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s violent crackdown on government protestors.
Obama said there will be no “sudden” withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, despite new outbursts of violence following the alleged massacre of 16 Afghan civilians by a U.S. soldier over the weekend.
“We’ve been there for 10 years and people get weary,” Obama said, acknowledging critics’ calls for an early withdraw of U.S. forces and the public’s plummeting support for the war.
The timeline for winding down the war will remain the same, the two leaders reaffirmed, with NATO shifting to a support role in 2013 and U.S. forces withdrawing in 2014.
What happens next in Afghanistan will be determined in May at the NATO summit in Chicago, Obama added.
As for Syria, the two leaders said they are committed to forcing Assad from power, but would only use military force as a last resort. The goal in Syria is a “peaceful transition,” rather than a “civil war,” Obama added.
Cameron, meanwhile, went further, threatening to prosecute Syrian leaders for war crimes.
“Britain and others have sent monitors to the Turkish border and elsewhere to make sure we document these crimes, we write down what has been done,” Cameron said. “People should always remember that international law has got a long reach and a long memory, and the people who are leading Syria at the moment and committing these crimes need to know that.”
