)
A day before the United States and the other world leaders are set to resume negotiations with Iran in Geneva, US President Barack Obama has asked American lawmakers and the international community to give diplomacy a chance for six months.
"What we are suggesting, both to the Israelis, to members of Congress here, to the international community, but also to the Iranians, is let's look, let's test the proposition that over the next six months we can resolve this in a diplomatic fashion while maintaining the essential sanctions architecture, and as president of the United States, me maintaining all options to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons," Obama said yesterday at the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council Annual Meeting .
"I think that is a test that is worth conducting. My hope and expectation is not that we're going to solve all of this just this week in this interim phase, but rather that we're purchasing ourselves some time to see how serious the Iranian regime might be in re-entering membership in the world community and taking the yoke of these sanctions off the backs of their economy," Obama said in response to a question.
Obama said when he came to power, there was no strong, enforceable international mechanism to really put the squeeze on Iran around its nuclear program, despite the fact that it violated a range of UN and nonproliferation treaty requirements.
"So we built, we constructed with the help of Congress, the strongest sanctions regime ever," he said.
"It has put a bite on the Iranian economy. They have seen a 5% contraction last year in their economy; it's projected to be another contraction this year, and in part, because the sanctions have been so effective, we were able to get Iran to seriously come to the table and look at, how are they going to give assurance to the international community that they are, in fact, not pursuing a nuclear weapons program," he added.
"I don't know if we'll be able to close a deal this week or next week. We had been very firm with the Iranians even on the interim deal about what we expect. Some of the reporting out there has been somewhat inaccurate, understandably, because the P-5 plus one -- the members of the -- permanent members of the Security Council in addition to -- and Germany as well -- have kept the negotiations fairly tight," he said referring to the next round of negotiations that begins in Geneva this week.
