Obama, Netanyahu confer on Iran
U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are in “full agreement” on the goal of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, the White House said as Republican candidate Mitt Romney renewed his attacks on the administration’s handling of the Middle East.
Obama had a 20-minute call with Netanyahu Friday, the president’s only publicly announced one-onone discussion with a foreign leader this week, following weeks of tensions between the leaders over how aggressively to confront Iran’s nuclear development program.
It also had implications for U.S. domestic politics, coming 39 days before the presidential election. Romney spoke by phone with Netanyahu within hours of Obama’s conversation.
Romney has sought to use signs of differences between Obama and Netanyahu over Iran to raise doubts with American Jewish voters about the president’s commitment to Israel and his ability to manage turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa. The Obama administration, in Friday’s statement, said the U.S. alliance with Israel is “unshakable.”
“The prime minister welcomed President Obama’s commitment before the United Nations General Assembly to do what we must to achieve” the goal of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, the White House said in its statement.
Netanyahu has been pushing the U.S. and western nations to set a “red line” at which point Iran’s nuclear development would warrant a military response.
Obama, while urging more time for negotiations and for economic sanctions to pressure Iran, has said the U.S. won’t allow the Islamic Republic to build a nuclear weapon.
In his speech Thursday to the UN General Assembly, Netanyahu held up a cartoon-style drawing of a bomb as a prop to get international attention for his call for the U.S. to issue a more direct warning to Iran.
“By next spring, at most next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and moved on to the final stage,” Netanyahu said.
Obama and Netanyahu both attended the UN session in New York this week, though not at the same time. Israeli media reported earlier this month that the U.S. president rebuffed Netanyahu’s request for a meeting, which Obama aides denied. The reports were published on the same day Netanyahu told reporters in Jerusalem that nations that “refuse to put a red line before Iran don’t have the moral right to place a red light before Israel.”
Romney, who has repeatedly criticized Obama for not meeting with Netanyahu while the prime minister is in the U.S., told reporters after speaking with Netanyahu that while he hoped diplomacy can resolve the standoff, military action must not be ruled out. “We spoke about his assessment of where the red line ought to be drawn, and my own views with regards to Iran,” Romney said of the conversation.