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Us will have the military option if Iran fails to comply with an agreement on nuclear weapons

Washington DC: Even as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu went ahead and urged the US Congress Tuesday to block the signing of a deal to contain Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons coinciding with international negotiations in Switzerland, the Obama administration continued to maintain the stand that the US will have the military option if Iran fails to comply with an (emerging) agreement to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Netanyahu told the US Congress that the terms outlined by US President Obama for an agreement to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons would lead to a nuclear armed Iran whose “unbridled aggression will inevitably lead to a nuclear war”.

Obama showed short-shrift to Netanyahu by dubbing his address as “nothing new”

Immediately before Netanyahu’s address before the US Congress on the Iran issue, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest had told media-persons that it is the responsibility of the Prime Minister to make his own decisions about where he wants to go. But what should not be lost on anybody is the strategy that President Obama has put in place to deal with Iran’s nuclear program. It is consistent with achieving our goal of ensuring that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon, he added.

The goal, according to Earnest, is to succeeded in essentially shutting down four pathways to Iran acquiring the fissile material that’s necessary to build a nuclear weapon. The first is to deal with the enrichment capacity at the Natanz facility. The second is to deal with the enrichment capacity at the Fordow facility. The third is to deal with the plutonium enrichment capacity at the heavy-water reactor that’s currently under construction at Arak. And fourth, to ensure that Iran does not have the capacity to pursue a covert option at a facility that is not yet known to the international community.

Because of economic pressure and isolation Iran has come to the negotiating table, the Press Secretary said adding what we are hopeful that we can achieve in the context of these negotiations is to shutdown these four clear paths to the fissile material that’s necessary to build a nuclear weapon.

Earnest went on to emphasise that Obama has repeatedly made the point that if they indicate that they are not willing to comply with an agreement — once one is signed — then we continue to have all of these options on the table. We can add additional sanctions to the mix if we feel like that would be successful. We’ll even have a military option that continues to be available to the President.