WASHINGTON — President Obama strongly defended last week’s preliminary agreement with Iran as a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to curb the spread of nuclear weapons in a dangerous region while reassuring critics that he would keep all options available if Tehran ultimately cheated.
As
he sought in an interview with The New York Times to sell the tentative
deal to skeptics accusing him of giving away too much, Mr. Obama
emphasized to Israel
that “we’ve got their backs” in the face of Iranian hostility. And he
suggested that he could accept some sort of vote in Congress if it did
not block his ability to carry out the agreement.
“This is our best bet by far to make sure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with Thomas L. Friedman,
an Op-Ed columnist for The Times, published on Sunday. “What we will be
doing even as we enter into this deal is sending a very clear message
to the Iranians and to the entire region that if anybody messes with
Israel, America will be there.”
In
the interview, held Saturday, Mr. Obama provided new details about how
international inspectors would try to access suspected covert nuclear
sites and about the sequence that would lead to sanctions being lifted.
Both were major issues in the last days of negotiations in Switzerland,
and Mr. Obama’s descriptions differed in key respects from Iran’s
interpretations.
That
gap suggested the hardest moments in the negotiations may yet be ahead,
given that commitments made last week must still be enshrined in a
written document signed by all parties by June 30. But Mr. Obama seemed
to gain breathing space as Republicans signaled they would give him
until then to see what the final deal looks like before directly
intervening.
The president’s comments came as the White House embarked on a campaign to sell
a preliminary agreement that he hopes will transform security in the
Middle East. Under the framework, negotiated with the United States and
five other world powers, Iran agreed to scale back its nuclear program
significantly for 10 to 15 years and accept intense international
inspections. In exchange, the United States and the international
community would lift sanctions that have punished the Iranian economy.
While
in theory preventing Iran from being able to quickly build a bomb, the
agreement leaves it with a nuclear program in place, even if much
diminished, drawing criticism from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of
Israel and Republican leaders in Congress as well as skepticism from
Arab allies and many Democrats.
“Not
a single centrifuge is destroyed,” Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday on “State
of the Union” on CNN. “Not a single nuclear facility is shut down,
including the underground facilities that they build illicitly.
Thousands of centrifuges will keep spinning, enriching uranium. That’s a
very bad deal.”
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a possible Republican
presidential candidate, said it was “probably the best deal that Barack
Obama could get with the Iranians because the Iranians don’t fear” him.
“Hillary Clinton could do better,” he added, as could all the Republican
candidates, “except maybe Rand Paul.” But Mr. Graham said he would wait
to see how the final agreement looked. “I don’t mind giving the
administration the time between now and June to put this deal together,”
he said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.
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