US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf responded to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Congress Address on Tuesday, and like US President Barack Obama her reaction was highly negative to Netanyahu’s criticism of the approaching Iran deal.
In a similar vein to Obama, she said: “we didn’t hear any – certainly any new ideas today, but more importantly, didn’t hear one single concrete alternative in today’s speech from the Prime Minister about how we could get to a double-digit duration, push breakout time to a year, and cut off the four pathways Iran could…use to get…fissile material for a nuclear weapon.”
Israeli officials responded to this point, arguing there was much new in Netanyahu’s proposal which would require Iran to take real actions in dismantling its nuclear program instead of making mere promises to remove sanctions, and would also deal with its ballistic missile program which the current deal avoids.
While Netanyahu and US officials alike have argued no deal is better than a bad deal, Harf opined “no deal means much shorter breakout than under an agreement. Right now, outside experts have said publicly we’re at about two to three months breakout. Our goal is a year.”
Calling Netanyahu’s talk of a better deal “hypothetical” and “rhetoric,” she added “anyone who tells you there’s a magic formula that they have in their head that we don’t have is just not looking at the situation realistically.”
“We need to be very clear about what we’re trying to achieve and what the alternatives look like, not in a fantasy world, not in a world without specifics, but in the real world. And that’s what we’re doing,” she claimed.
Harf stated that Netanyahu said “some sort of perplexing things…including that all sanctions will eventually be lifted on Iran. That is not the case.” She admitted that the nuclear sanctions indeed would indeed be lifted, but “sanctions for terrorism, sanctions for human rights” will remain.
“He also said that at the end of the duration, Iran would have ‘full international legitimacy,’ which is also a little overstated and just not accurate,” stated Harf.
When asked whether by maintaining the deal Iran’s nuclear program would not get legitimacy, she acknowledged that indeed the program would receive such legitimacy, but attempted to differentiate between “full legitimacy” for Iran as opposed to legitimacy for its nuclear program.
“We have always said they would be able to have a domestic enrichment that is peaceful in nature,” she added.
Iran has repeatedly threatened Israel with annihilation, and is the leading state sponsor of terrorism worldwide.
Centrifuges for a nuclear arsenal in weeks
Harf was asked about Netanyahu’s statement that US Secretary of State John Kerry had acknowledged Iran would be allowed to increase to 190,000 centrifuges as its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has demanded, a state of affairs that would allow the Islamic regime to produce a nuclear arsenal within weeks.
She insisted that Kerry had not said Iran would be allowed to increase to 190,000 centrifuges in the deal.
“When you are a member, a non-nuclear-weapons member of the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) – and I’m not an NPT expert – but at the conclusion of the duration of this, in addition to the lasting transparency measures we have, Iran will not be able to do things to get to a nuclear weapon,” she claimed.
Harf continued “you can throw out a lot of very scary hypotheticals, but if we look at the technology and we look at where they are today and where they could be in a double-digit duration (i.e. the ten years Obama has called for the deal to last which Iran rejected – ed.), that is further away from a nuclear weapon.”
In response to the bill being proposed to allow Congress to vote on the Iran nuclear deal before it is agreed upon, Harf made clear Obama intends to shoot down any such motion.
“If that comes to the President’s desk, he will veto it. …We can’t negotiate an agreement while Congress is attempting to legislate either what might be in it or that it can’t be implemented, how it could be implemented, which is part of this as well,” she said.
