Obama Insists Nuclear Agreement with Iran Is a Good Deal, as White House Admits That Tehran Never Agreed to Phased Sanctions

By Francesca Chambers. As President Barack Obama was selling the nuclear agreement with Iran as a net plus for United States and its allies, the White House today admitted that Tehran never agreed to phased sanctions relief as part of a political understanding it came to with the international community.

The timing of sanctions relief was last week called into question after an Iranian official suggested his country expected the immediate termination of nuclear-related restrictions, not the gradual lifting of sanctions that the Obama administration said would accompany a formal agreement.

Asked on Friday about Iran’s apparent misgivings, a State Department spokesperson scoffed at the he said, she said, and claimed she was ‘not really concerned’ about the language the country was using to convince its citizens to support the framework agreement.

The White House characterized the disagreement as a difference of opinion on how quickly sanctions would be removed on Monday while acknowledging that ‘there still continue to be some important sticking points’ that need to be worked out before a final deal can be signed and sealed.

The building’s chief spokesman, Josh Earnest, refused to attribute a probability to a formal deal ever being reached, in light of the revelation, but said he was ‘feeling more optimistic’ than before. (Read more from “Obama Insists Nuclear Agreement with Iran Is a Good Deal, as White House Admits That Tehran Never Agreed to Phased Sanctions” HERE)

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Obama Admits: Deal Will Give Iran ‘near Zero’ Breakout Time in 13 Years

By Josh Lederman. 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.

Breakout time refers to how long it would take to build a bomb if Iran decided to pursue one full-bore — in other words, how long the rest of the world would have to stop it. The framework deal, if honored, expands Iran’s breakout time — currently two to three months — to at least a year. But that constraint would stay in place only for 10 years, at which point some restrictions would start phasing out. (Read more from this story HERE)

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