President Obama said on Monday that Iran would need to agree to halt nuclear work for a decade to finalize a deal between Washington and Tehran.
“If, in fact, Iran is willing to agree to double-digit years of keeping their program where it is right now and, in fact, rolling back elements of it that currently exist … if we’ve got that, and we’ve got a way of verifying that, there’s no other steps we can take that would give us such assurance that they don’t have a nuclear weapon,” Obama told Reuters in an interview Monday.
The U.S. goal is to make sure “there’s at least a year between us seeing them try to get a nuclear weapon and them actually being able to obtain one,” the president added.
Critics, including more hawkish Democrats, have warned that a 10-year freeze is not sufficient to deter Iran from building a bomb.
Obama’s interview came on the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, when he is expected to rail against the negotiations between the Obama administration and Iran.
Obama, who has been critical of the Netanyahu speech, tried to dial down tensions on Monday.
“This is not a personal issue. I think that it is important for every country in its relationship with the United States to recognize that the U.S. has a process of making policy,” Obama insisted.
The president said Netanyahu has been consistently wrong about the price of talks between the United States and Iran.
“Netanyahu made all sorts of claims,” Obama told the news service. “This was going to be a terrible deal. This was going to result in Iran getting $50 billion worth of relief. Iran would not abide by the agreement. None of that has come true.”
In advance of the Netanyahu speech, Obama dispatched National Security Adviser Susan Rice and United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference to offer counter programing to the Israeli prime minister.
Netanyahu insists the motivation behind his speech is Israel’s national security, not his re-election bid. The Israeli election is March 17.
“Our friendship will weather the current disagreement as well, to grow even stronger in the future — because we share the same dreams,” Netanyahu said Monday morning at the pro-Israel conference, adding, “the values that unite us are much stronger than the differences that divide us.”
