Netanyahu echoes Obama’s comments on Iran breakout time

Prime Minister Netanyahu said Wednesday that he concurred with the view that President Barack Obama presented a day earlier during an NPR interview, in which Obama appeared to acknowledge that Iran will be able to break out to the bomb as soon as the nuclear agreement expires.

“Israel shares the view that with the expiry of the nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, Iran’s breakout time for acquiring nuclear bombs will be zero,” Netanyahu said in a video message recorded during a family outing in the Negev.

In his message, Netanyahu appeared to reaffirm an Israeli rejection of the White House clarifications to the president’s remarks.

A senior official told The Times of Israel earlier Wednesday that Israel understood the president to be acknowledging the problematics of the accord. The official noted, furthermore, that Netanyahu — a relentless opponent of the US-backed terms — had highlighted precisely the problem that Obama cited when he addressed both houses of Congress last month.

In the video, Netanyahu said the minimal break-out time “will be an inevitable result of the automatic removal of limitations on the nuclear program, which will enable Iran to reach industrial-grade capability in producing nuclear bombs.”

“The alternative to this bad agreement is not a war; the alternative is a good agreement,” Netanyahu added. “This can be achieved but one must stand firm and demand the conditions necessary to safeguard the security of the State of Israel, the security of the region and the security of the world.”

In a Monday interview with NPR, Obama, whose has been selling the framework deal to critics, was pushing back on the charge that the deal being negotiated by US-led world powers fails to eliminate the risk of Tehran breaking out to the bomb, because it allows Iran to keep enriching uranium.

He said that Iran will be capped for a decade at 300 kilograms of enriched uranium — not enough to convert to a stockpile of weapons-grade material. He then added: “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.”

But the State Department later scrambled to deny that Obama had acknowledged Iran will be allowed to build nuclear weapons at will after the emerging deal expires.

State Department acting spokesperson Marie Harf said Tuesday that Obama “was referring to a scenario in which there was no deal. And if you go back and look at the transcript – I know it’s a little confusing, I spoke to the folks at the White House and read it a few times – it’s my understanding he was referring to — even though it was a little muddled in the words — a scenario in which there was no deal.”