Israel: Bad Iran deal 'will lead to war'
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- President Obama meets Tuesday with Senate leaders to discuss Iran talks, sanctions
- Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu calls a possible Iran deal "exceedingly bad"
- U.S. Secretary of State Kerry says an interim deal with Iran won't put Israel at risk
- International talks on Iran resume later this week in Geneva
While both governments
reject any possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran, they are clearly at odds
over a possible agreement as soon as this week that would loosen
economic sanctions against Tehran in exchange for a suspension of part
of its nuclear program.
"It's a bad deal -- an
exceedingly bad deal," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told
CNN on Sunday of the agreement sought by U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry at international talks in Geneva.
White House spokesman Jay
Carney argued Monday that the negotiations offered a diplomatic
solution, telling reporters that "rejecting negotiations means choosing"
the use of force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
White House: Iran relief would be modest
Fareed's Take: Hurdles to Iran nuke deal
In a sign of the level of
disconnect, the two countries were unable to agree on when Kerry would
next travel to Israel for talks with Netanyahu on the Iranian issue.
Netanyahu said Sunday
that Kerry would meet with him on Friday, but Kerry told reporters
Monday he would be unable to make the trip so soon.
The split involves
international diplomacy and domestic political issues in both countries,
and comes as Kerry and U.S. President Barack Obama also push Netanyahu
to work with Palestinian officials on forging a Middle East peace
agreement.
While Netanyahu and Obama
have long acknowledged that close friends can disagree on issues, the
direct language on both sides about their differences over a possible
agreement with Iran showed the volatility of an issue with major
regional and global implications.
Iran insists it only
seeks to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes, but the international
community led by Israel, the United States, France and others demands
that Tehran dismantle its ability to enrich uranium and other technology
needed to develop nuclear weapons.
In an interview Sunday
on CNN, Netanyahu made clear he opposed lifting some sanctions now -- as
called for under the agreement being negotiated -- without getting
further concessions to ensure Iran would be unable to continue with
uranium enrichment and other steps.
"I think you should not
only keep up the pressure; I think you should increase the pressure,
because it's finally working," Netanyahu said, labeling Iran's economy
as close to paralysis. "If you give it up now, when you have that
pressure, and Iran doesn't even take apart, dismantle one centrifuge,
what leverage will you have when you've eased the pressure?"
At the same time, he
repeated his insistence that Israel "always reserves the right to defend
itself against any threat," which is diplomatic speak for a military
strike on Iran's nuclear facilities to stop development of a weapon.
In Congress, some
legislators including conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats
share the concerns of Netanyahu and the powerful pro-Israel lobby in
Washington.
Democratic Sen. Robert
Menendez of New Jersey and GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina
both question the merits of the Iran deal under discussion and instead
call for tougher sanctions.
"Iran has the right to a
civilian, peaceful nuclear program, but they have no right under
international law to enrich" uranium needed to develop nuclear weapons,
Menendez told MSNBC last week.
However, Carney said
Monday that the interim agreement under discussion in Geneva offered
only "modest and eminently reversible" sanctions relief to Iran, rather
than a fundamental shift in the sanctions architecture.
He described it as the
first part of a two-phase process intended to reach a more comprehensive
deal in which Iranian leaders would have to show in a "verifiable,
transparent way that they have forsaken nuclear weapons ambitions."
"The end goal here is
shared by everyone," Carney said of preventing Iran from developing
nuclear weapons. "There's no daylight here between the United States and
Israel."
Kerry told reporters Monday that Netanyahu had "every right in the world" to state his position and defend his interests.
At the same time, the
former U.S. senator noted that he had been a consistent supporter of
"our friends in Israel" throughout his political career, and added that
"I can assure those friends and everybody watching this that nothing
that we are doing here, in my judgment, will put Israel at any
additional risk."
The Geneva talks involve
Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- the
United States, Russia, China, Great Britain and France -- as well as
Germany in what is known as the P5+1 in diplomatic shorthand.
According to a senior
U.S. administration official, the talks are "getting close" to an
interim deal with Iran that would prevent its nuclear program "from
advancing, and roll it back" in key areas. The last round of
negotiations broke up without a deal earlier this month, with each side
blaming the other's reluctance.
Carney said Monday that
Obama would meet on Tuesday with Senate leaders as well as the top
Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Banking, Foreign Relations,
Armed Services and Intelligence committee to provide an update on the
P5+1 negotiations heading into the next round later this week.
Last week, Kerry told a
Senate panel that new sanctions on Iran now by Congress "could be viewed
as bad faith" in the negotiations.
"It could destroy the
ability to be able to get agreement," he added, "and it could actually
wind up setting us back in dialogue that's taken 30 years to achieve."
Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani, who was elected earlier this year, has made lifting tough
economic sanctions against his country a priority.
During a visit to the
U.N. General Assembly in September, Rouhani's moderate diplomatic
approach raised hopes in the West of a thaw in relations with Tehran and
progress in negotiations on its nuclear program.
Rouhani's visit
culminated in a phone call with Obama and a meeting between Kerry and
his Iranian counterpart. It was the first such high-level contact
between the two enemies since Iran's 1979 revolution.
Iran recently signed a
deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency that agrees to give the
U.N. nuclear watchdog agency access to long-unseen nuclear sites,
including a heavy-water reactor in Arak.
