Israel Matzav: Obama: Netanyahu got it right when he spoke to Congress

Wednesday, April 08, 2015

Obama: Netanyahu got it right when he spoke to Congress

The Nuclear Deal With Iran: Questions Unanswered pic.twitter.com/6TnwzhyQA1
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) April 7, 2015

In an interview with NPR on Tuesday, President Hussein Obama admitted that Prime Minister Netanyahu got it right in his speech to Congress in March.
There is no Iran nuke “deal,” but whatever there is to the framework, even Obama now admits it paves Iran’s path to the bomb, albeit on a delayed fuse, as AP reports, Obama says Iran could cut nuke time to near zero in 13 years:

Defending an emerging nuclear deal, President Barack Obama said Iran would be kept a year away from obtaining a nuclear weapon for more than a decade, but conceded Tuesday that the buffer period could shrink to almost nothing after 13 or more years.

Obama, whose top priority at the moment is to sell the framework deal to critics, was pushing back on the charge that the deal fails to eliminate the risk because it allows Iran to keep enriching uranium. He told NPR News that Iran will be capped for a decade at 300 kilograms — not enough to convert to a stockpile of weapons-grade material.

“What is a more relevant fear would be that in Year 13, 14, 15, they have advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point, the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero,” Obama said.

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Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, Netanyahu: Nuke Deal ‘Paves Iran’s Path to the Bomb’:

Iraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Congress on Tuesday that a potential nuclear deal being negotiated by major powers including the United States “paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”

Netanyahu, who vehemently opposes the Obama administration’s ongoing negotiations with Iran, said that world leaders must instead work to “stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror.”

“It doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb,” he said of the potential deal as he appeared at the Capitol in front of hundreds of American lawmakers. “It paves Iran’s path to the bomb. ”

“For over a year we’ve been told that no deal is better than a bad deal,” he added. “Well, this is a bad deal. It’s a very bad deal. We are better off without it.”

Quizzed on Obama's interview later Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf was saved by a power outage. Start watching at the 9:05 mark of that video.

Meanwhile, a French fact sheet seen by the Times of Israel on Tuesday took a very different view of the agreement with Iran than the US view.

A French government fact sheet on the Iran framework deal, which has not been made public by Paris but which has been seen by The Times of Israel, provides for Iran to gradually introduce the use of advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium after 12 years, in contrast to the US official parameters, which make no such specific provision.

The use of the more advanced IR-2 and IR-4 centrifuges, as permitted according to the French fact sheet, would enable Iran to more rapidly accumulate the highly enriched uranium needed to build nuclear weapons, accelerating its breakout time to the bomb.

The French fact sheet also specifies that Iran will be allowed to continue R&D work on the advanced IR-4, IR-5, IR-6 and IR-8 centrifuges, the last of which can enrich uranium at 20-times the speed of Iran’s current IR-1 centrifuges, whereas the American parameters are less specific.

Differences between the texts issued by Paris and Washington also extend to the question of inspection and supervision of Iran’s activities, with the French document indicating that the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, will be able to visit any suspect site in Iran — so-called “anywhere, anytime” access — whereas the US document is less far-reaching.