Iran deal won’t expire after a decade, senior US official says

The prospective nuclear agreement with Iran will not be limited to a decade, a senior US official said Sunday, rebuffing claims made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Briefing Israeli correspondents, the senior US official emphasized that the deal the six world powers are trying to sign with Iran will not be limited to a decade but will included several phases that will continue for “way more than a decade.”

“We will not allow Iran to go nuclear,” the senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Washington is keenly aware of the catastrophic consequences of Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons and will therefore do everything to prevent such a scenario, the official said.

“We can reach a long-term agreement that will distance Iran from a nuclear weapon, an agreement that will last more than a decade, an agreement that will be better than a military strike,” the official said.

Washington is convinced that additional sanctions at this time would not succeed in preventing Iran from advancing toward nuclear weapons capability, the official added.

“We will [seek to] reach a political understanding by the end of March,” the official said, adding that no full-fledged agreement would be possible by that date. The current negotiations are a “complicated puzzle” but the world powers – the so-called P5+1 – will seek to get “the right deal and we’re not rushing. We want a political agreement and we want the right agreement without having time pressures.”

The official stressed that the Iranians already have all the knowledge necessary to to attain the bomb, and that sanctions had not been able to prevent their acquiring that expertise. The challenge and the goal now, the official said, was to ensure they not translate that knowledge into attaining the bomb.

US President Barack Obama is determined to push for a deal eventually because he doesn’t want to go in circles, the official said. However, it is not guaranteed that the current gaps can be bridged.

“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” the official said about the negotiations.

The US administration is routinely updating all its allies on the progress made in the talks, the official said. Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the commander of the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate, will travel to Washington next week to be briefed by American officials there.

During his controversial speech to Congress last week, Netanyahu criticized the prospective deal for “automatically” expiring in what he said was “about a decade.”

“Now, a decade may seem like a long time in political life, but it’s the blink of an eye in the life of a nation. It’s a blink of an eye in the life of our children. We all have a responsibility to consider what will happen when Iran’s nuclear capabilities are virtually unrestricted and all the sanctions will have been lifted,” he said.