Statement By The President On First Step Agreement On Iran’s Nuclear Program

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Today, the United States — together with our close allies and partners — took an important first step toward a comprehensive solution that addresses our concerns with the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program.

Since I took office, I’ve made clear my determination to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. As I’ve said many times, my strong preference is to resolve this issue peacefully, and we’ve extended the hand of diplomacy. Yet for many years, Iran has been unwilling to meet its obligations to the international community. So my administration worked with Congress, the United Nations Security Council and countries around the world to impose unprecedented sanctions on the Iranian government.

These sanctions have had a substantial impact on the Iranian economy, and with the election of a new Iranian President earlier this year, an opening for diplomacy emerged. I spoke personally with President Rouhani of Iran earlier this fall. Secretary Kerry has met multiple times with Iran’s Foreign Minister. And we have pursued intensive diplomacy — bilaterally with the Iranians, and together with our P5-plus-1 partners — the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China, as well as the European Union.

Today, that diplomacy opened up a new path toward a world that is more secure — a future in which we can verify that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful and that it cannot build a nuclear weapon.

While today’s announcement is just a first step, it achieves a great deal. For the first time in nearly a decade, we have halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program, and key parts of the program will be rolled back. Iran has committed to halting certain levels of enrichment and neutralizing part of its stockpiles. Iran cannot use its next-generation centrifuges, which are used for enriching uranium. Iran cannot install or start up new centrifuges, and its production of centrifuges will be limited. Iran will halt work at its plutonium reactor. And new inspections will provide extensive access to Iran’s nuclear facilities and allow the international community to verify whether Iran is keeping its commitments.

These are substantial limitations which will help prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Simply put, they cut off Iran’s most likely paths to a bomb. Meanwhile, this first step will create time and space over the next six months for more negotiations to fully address our comprehensive concerns about the Iranian program. And because of this agreement, Iran cannot use negotiations as cover to advance its program.

On our side, the United States and our friends and allies have agreed to provide Iran with modest relief, while continuing to apply our toughest sanctions. We will refrain from imposing new sanctions, and we will allow the Iranian government access to a portion of the revenue that they have been denied through sanctions. But the broader architecture of sanctions will remain in place and we will continue to enforce them vigorously. And if Iran does not fully meet its commitments during this six-month phase, we will turn off the relief and ratchet up the pressure.

Over the next six months, we will work to negotiate a comprehensive solution. We approach these negotiations with a basic understanding: Iran, like any nation, should be able to access peaceful nuclear energy. But because of its record of violating its obligations, Iran must accept strict limitations on its nuclear program that make it impossible to develop a nuclear weapon.

In these negotiations, nothing will be agreed to unless everything is agreed to. The burden is on Iran to prove to the world that its nuclear program will be exclusively for peaceful purposes.

If Iran seizes this opportunity, the Iranian people will benefit from rejoining the international community, and we can begin to chip away at the mistrust between our two nations. This would provide Iran with a dignified path to forge a new beginning with the wider world based on mutual respect. If, on the other hand, Iran refuses, it will face growing pressure and isolation.

Over the last few years, Congress has been a key partner in imposing sanctions on the Iranian government, and that bipartisan effort made possible the progress that was achieved today. Going forward, we will continue to work closely with Congress. However, now is not the time to move forward on new sanctions -– because doing so would derail this promising first step, alienate us from our allies and risk unraveling the coalition that enabled our sanctions to be enforced in the first place.

An Israeli lawyer who has won billions of dollars for relatives of terror victims has asked Obama administration officials why they are discussing letting Iran off the hook on sanctions while it owes American relatives colossal sums of money.

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, who heads the Israel Law Center, has won billions of dollars for relatives of terror victims in lawsuits against the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist organization as well as banks and other agencies that aid terrorists or act as a pipeline for funds for them.

She wrote Under Secretary Wendy Sherman last month, “Iran must not be allowed under any circumstances to avoid making payment of reparations and due compensations to the families of those whose lives they have destroyed through terrorism…and through the terror organizations it supports: Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.”

In a blog posted this past week on The Hill website based in Washington, Darshan-Leitner noted that Sherman did not respond, and she added, “As a result of lawsuits taken by American victims of terror in U.S. courts, the Iranian regime currently owes billions of dollars from decades of terrorist activity resulting in dozens of victims and severed families. This debt has yet to be recognized or paid by the Iranian government with no sign of an intention to do so.”

She called on Congress to ensure that the U.S. government is working to keep the interests of the terror victims’ families on the table.

Darshan-Leitner pointed out that when George W. Bush was President, he conditioned repealing of any sanctions against Libya on payment of reparations to the victims of Libyan terror. “This move resulted in the payment of $1.5 billion dollars to the victims’ families,” she wrote.

On the other hand, Bush also removed North Korea from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism in 2008, without compensation being paid to American families, she added.

“We fear this lack of response not only portends a potential Iranian exemption from paying reparations and giving due compensation to families affected by terror in return for normalization of relations, but that it also signals a softening of Sherman’s position on the proliferation of terrorist activity and most significantly, creates difficult implications for the United States’ reputation as a pillar of justice in the war on terror,” according to Darshan-Leitner.

Her blog continued, “As lawyers for American, Canadian and Israeli victims of Iranian terror, we call on Congress to take action and place a check on Under Secretary Sherman in this current round of negotiations… We call on all members of Congress to ensure that victims of terror are not forgotten and to help make the Iranian regime provide the proper reparations and due compensation for the innocent lives taken at the hands of terrorist activities and not to gain a free pass in the name of diplomatic maneuverings.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu challenged Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas Monday to address the Knesset and recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

“I call on him from here today: let’s break the deadlock,” said Prime Minister Netanyahu in the Knesset and in the presence of visiting French President Francois Hollande.

Netanyahu then invited himself to Ramallah, saying he would go there after Abbas answers his call to speak to the Knesset. That is likely to happen about the same time the Republican party approves Obamacare.

Abbas two months ago, Abbas said he was willing to go to Jerusalem and sit down with Netanyahu, but neither man has to worry too much about the threat that they will meet. There really is not much for them to talk about except how much they distrust the Obama administration.

Netanyahu, in his speech to the Knesset, returned to his favorite taunt of Abbas. “Get up on this platform and recognize the historical truth: the Jews have a nearly 4,000-year-old link to the land of Israel,” he said. “ The Jews are a people with a right to self-determination. In real peace, all Palestinian claims regarding the State of Israel will end, including national claims on its territory and sovereignty.”

Abbas has said that Israel does not need his seal of approval for its being Jewish.

The entire “Jewish State of Israel” gambit is a code word for Israel’s blocking the Arab world’s demand of the so-called “right of return,” meaning the right of several million Arabs to turn Israel into a non-Jewish state, based on the claim of lineage from former Arab residents of the country.

Both Abbas and Netanyahu know it is not going to happen, and both men are playing gamesmanship to avoid the wrath of President Barack Obama, who in turn would be happy if Abbas and Netanyahu were to hang themselves and let the United States off the hook and go back to worrying about its own affairs.

On Friday, Nov. 16, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve what has been nicknamed the “Keep Your Health Plan Act” in a 261-157 vote.  Four Republicans voted against it, but 39 Democrats voted for it. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.).

Many of the Democrats who crossed the aisle and voted for the bill face tough re-election challenges next year.

The bill allows insurance companies to offer health plans that were cancelled for not meeting new requirements under ObamaCare.

Millions of Americans received cancellation letters over the past month, despite the administration’s repeated promises that “if you like your plan, you can keep it.” Under the House-approved bill, consumers opting to keep their existing plans wouldn’t face any penalties enforced by Obamacare. Insurers would then be allowed to sell their minimal plans to new customers.

The passage of this bill, which President Obama said he would veto, marked the end of a bad week for the president.

On Thursday, the president apologized to the nation both for the badly managed rollout of the Affordable Care Act and for having pledged to Americans that if they preferred the health plans they had over the plans offered under the new Act, they could keep them.

Upton accused Obama of knowing that his signature law would force millions of people out of plans they liked. He said during the House debate that Obama’s promise that “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it” would go down in history as a line forever associated with Obama.

In turn, Democrats faithful to the president argued that the legislation passed on Friday would undermine the entire national health care plan.

That prompted Democrats to argue that Upton’s bill would drastically undermine ObamaCare, since it would let people keep what they say are substandard plans, and let them avoid buying new plans under the ObamaCare exchanges.

“This one on the floor today really takes the cake, because it [would], essentially, pull the plug on the Affordable Care Act,” said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

House Energy & Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said this would allow a “shadow market” of old plans to undermine ObamaCare plans.

But Republicans said that the term “shadow market” just means a market that sells more affordable plans that people want.

“It’s forcing people to choose healthcare they do not want, cannot afford, and isn’t right for themselves and their families,” said House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

The legislation approved by the House is expected to face tough opposition in the Senate.

The Obama administration’s handling of the Iranian nuclear threat has cost President Barack Obama the support of Israelis, who usually give Washington the benefit of the doubt.

A Smith survey released Thursday revealed that 55 percent of the respondents said they do not count on the United States to “take care of its [Israel’s’ security in negotiations with Iran on the nuclear issue.”

Only one third of the respondents said they “count on” the Obama administration.

The distrust of Washington was further highlighted by answers to the question, “Do you think the U.S. government gave or did not give Netanyahu  a reliable and accurate picture of the negotiations with Iran?”

Only 24 percent replied in the positive and that an accurate picture was given, while 42 percent responded in the negative. The others had no opinion.

Regarding Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s criticism of the U.S. government, 40 percent said it was justified and only 9 percent said it was not justified and was excessive. Another 22 percent said it was justified but excessive.

Thursday morning, Israel’s Home Front Minister Gilad Erdan, a senior and ideological Likud member, railed against  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for complaining to senators on Wednesday that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is arguing against a deal with Iran before it is concluded. Erdan, said here, “I have not heard such a claim for many years.”

Naftali Bennett, chairman of the Jewish Home party that is part of the Netanyahu coalition government, is in Washington to lobby against easing sanctions on Iran.

Kerry, who told senators on Wednesday to “stop listening to the Israelis,” may also have been referring to Bennett, whose presence in Washington is far from applauded by President Barack Obama.

Bennett posted on his Facebook page a letter he sent to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Jewish Federations of North America, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization and the Russian Jewish Congress.

“When Iran launches a nuclear missile at Rome or Tel Aviv, it will have happened only because a Bad Deal was made during these defining moments,” Bennett wrote. “The free world stands before a fork in the road with a clear choice: Either stand strong and insist Iran dismantles its nuclear-weapons program, or surrender, cave in and allow Iran to retain its 18,500 centrifuges.”

Even the liberal ADL has turned its back on the Obama administration, after having agreed  not to lobby for or against sanctions. AIPAC immediately refused a National Security Council request to suspend lobbying against sanctions.

ADL Director David Harris wrote in Haaretz this week that while he understands President Obama’s concern that new sanctions could disrupt talks with Iran, “It is the ever-toughening sanctions that got Iran to negotiate in the first place; there needs to be a reminder that things will get still worse for Tehran if nothing changes soon on the ground.

“Elaborate efforts on Iran’s part to buy time — with Tehran’s mastery of modulated feints, nods, winks, and hints of openness — just won’t wash.

Two recent Palestinian Authority soccer tournaments included four teams named after terrorists who were behind some of the most lethal attacks that murdered Israeli civilians, Palestinian Media Watch reported Wednesday.

The games were not played in official Palestinian Authority tournaments, but the official PA daily’s reportage of the tournament’s “success to the souls of…martyrs” illustrates a culture of terror that has permeated the Palestinian Authority in education, politics and sports ever since the era of Yasser Arafat, who was a Palestinian as much as you and your mother-in-law. He was born in Egypt.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu commented after Wednesday’s fatal terrorist stabbing of a soldier by a terrorist from Jenin that “the incitement through official channels of the Palestinian Authority and schools must stop.”

It is too late.

The United States for more than two decades has turned two blind eyes and two deaf ears to constant incitement in which an entire generation has been brainwashed into thinking that life is a lot nicer when you can kill Jews and know.

The Oslo Accords of 1993 committed the Palestinian Authority to halt all incitement. The Bush Administration ignored official PA encouragement to murder Israelis, and the Obama administration has done worse be publicly stating it does not exist. President Barack Obama has said on a number of occasions that Mahmoud Abbas has stopped incitement.

Official PA incitement has been documented hundreds of times on these pages and in other media, ranging from official PA documents and maps showing the Palestinian Authority flag to wave over all of Israel to Abbas’ praise for terrorists, including honors in public squares.

With the adoption of the populist term of “resistance,” terror has officially been eliminated. Simply don’t say the word and it does not exist.

That is the only way to explain U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry remarkably stupid remark last week that Israel faces a third intifada because of its refusal to hand over most of Israel to Abbas on a silver platter.

When soccer teams are named after murderers, Abbas does not have to incite, but the fact that he allows soccer teams to be named after Yahya Ayyash, Dalal Mughrabi, and Ghassan Kanafan reflects tacit enthusiasm for their barbaric acts.

PMW reminds us that Ayyash was the first Hamas suicide bomb builder and planner, known as “the Engineer,” and is considered the founder of Palestinian suicide terror. He was behind attacks killing dozens of Israelis and injuring hundreds. Mughrabi led the most lethal terror attack in Israel’s history in 1978, when she and other terrorists hijacked a bus on the Coastal Road and killed 37 civilians, 12 of them children.

Kanafani was a writer and a leader of the terror organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP has planned and carried out numerous terror attacks against Israeli civilians since its founding in 1967.

All three teams bearing the names of these terrorist played in a tournament at Al Quds University in Shechem.

A fourth team that played in another tournament was named after terrorist Ziyad Da’as, a commander of the Tanzim, a faction of Abbas’ Fatah party,

Da’as planned the attack at a Bat-Mitzvah celebration in Hadera on Jan. 17, 2002, in which a terrorist gunman killed six and wounded dozens. He  also participated in the kidnapping and murder of Etgar Zeituni and Motti Dayan in Tulkarm in January 2001. Israeli military police killed him killed during a clash in 2002.

Although the Palestinian Authority did not run the tournaments, PMW translated and published a report by the PA official daily.

“At the end of the special tournament, the heroic martyrs who fulfilled their duty to the homeland were honored,” the newspaper wrote. “Mohammed Tamouni, the martyr’s brother, dedicated the big win and the tournament’s success to the souls of his brother and all of Palestine’s martyrs, who are more honorable than all of us. Tamouni said that this tournament will continue to take place annually in order to remember the heroes whom we will never forget.”

Other teams were named after more “minor” terrorists, such as Amer Nassar, killed in 2013 by the Israeli army after throwing a Molotov cocktail at a military post.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has ordered Housing Minster Uri Ariel to cancel plans for 1,200 housing units that could accommodate thousands of people in the “E-1” area of the city of Maaleh Adumim, located 10 minutes east of Jerusalem and overlooking the Dead Sea.

The cancellation was ordered shortly after the Haaretz newspaper reported that the Housing Ministry has hired an architect to plan construction of residential units for a reported 20,000 people in Maaleh Adumim and in smaller communities in Judea and Samaria. The cancellation affects only E-1 and not other areas.

The Office of the Prime Minister was unusually honest, although inaccurate, in explaining the order to Ariel, a leading Jewish Home minister.

“There is no need to pay international prices for a process that does not have great significance,” it told the Yediot Acharonot newspaper.”

Not of “great significance?” Apparently, the Prime Minister’s office was being sarcastic. More probable, it was being cynical.

E-1 has become a flashing red line for the Palestinian Authority. Building Jewish homes in E-1 would guarantee that the Palestinian Authority would not endanger Israeli security with a contiguous land mass from eastern Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria.

Constant reports that E-1 would “cut off” the Palestinian Authority are patent lies because highways connect Arab villages and cities in all directions.

It has been a political ping-pong ball within Israel, with nationalists such as Ariel fighting tooth and nail for Israel to stand up and take a position that the mostly vacant 4.5 square mile area, which is part of the city of Maaleh Adumim, will be a home for Jews, sooner and not later.

Almost everyone except the Obama administration knows that it will happen. Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas once upon a time may have had little hope that he could prevent E-1 from being developed, but the Obama administration has effectively become his spokesman and is dead set against its development.

The Bush administration gets the first “credit” for opposing construction in E-1 after President George W. Bush came out with his “Roadmap Plan,” which eventually fell off a cliff, a better result than the Oslo Accords that literally exploded in Israel’s collective face.

The saga of E-1 is a prime example of why Israel cannot depend on promises from the United States. President Ronald Reagan once wrote Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a letter that promised recognition of Israel’s right to build there. The promise was not a legal document, and its worth was only as long as Reagan was in office. The Obama adminstration has said it is not committed by the letter.

It was none other than Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, whose memory has been defaced into an image of Peace Now, who in 1994 provided Maaleh Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel with documents to make E-1 an official part of the city.

Nearly 30 years later, all that Israel has built on E-1 is a police station. The Arabs have woken up and have sent Bedouin families to dot the area so they can tell foreign and local reporters how they have been living on the land for centuries.

E-1 has been a toy, or pawn, for Prime Minister Netanyahu.

He has defied nationalists and has toed the line in Washington to keep the bulldozers out of the area.

True, after Abbas went to the United Nations last November to upgrade the PA’s status in the General Assembly to that of a non-member state, Netanyahu unleashed the E-1 pawn and announced plans to build 5,000 residential units there.

So much for hot air.

Not a single house has been built there. In fact, Netanyahu inflicted an unannounced building freeze on almost all of Judea and Samaria until last month, one hour after Israel freed the second batch of terrorists in the four-step program to release 104 murderers in return for the privilege of officially arguing with the Palestinian Authority.

Netanyahu’s policy on E-1 sounds like a broken record.

In January 2009, Netanyahu secretly promised President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Israel would not build in E-1, according to an Al Jazeera report in 2011.

Netanyahu, of course, denied the report, prompting Maaleh Adumim Mayor Kashriel to demand that the Prime Minister “order the defense minister to submit the master plan for the neighborhood immediately and progress with development on site, as former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did during his tenure.”

Former MK Yaakov Katz (Ketzele), responded Sunday on his Facebook page to Benjamin Netanyahu’s impassioned call on the United States not to proceed with the current deal with Iran, because it’s a bad deal. Katz, one of the prominent leaders of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria, called on Netanyahu to avoid the other American “gift” to Israel, the so called peace negotiations with the Palestininas.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu, the upcoming deal with [PA Chairman Mahmoud] Abbas is also a bad deal,” Katz proclaimed. “It’s a bad deal for Israel. We’re forced, under American pressure, to negotiate with the Authority headed by Abbas and [Saeb] Erekat.

“Our friend, the U.S. government, forced us at the time to agree to the Gaza elections, and the result was: Hamas took over.

“The U.S. Administration forced elections and democratization on the people of Iraq, and since then they’ve had 12,000 killed each year.

“The Obama Administration forced an election on the Egyptians. The result: the Muslim Brothers, haters of America and Israel, took over.

“In Afghanistan, the Americans forced a so called democratic regime. Since then, not a day goes by there without a car bomb exploding.

“The Obama regime has reached a compromise deal with Syria, which has been exacting the daily slaughter of numerous civilians.

“And now, in Iran, a deal is being cobbled between the Americans and the Iranians, and Prime Minister Netanyahu defines it as ‘a deal which is bad for Israel and bad for the world.’

“In Judea and Samaria live close to 400 thousand Jews. Some 25 thousand live in the Golan, and some 325 thousand in the neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

“The indecent and unfriendly treatment we’ve been receiving from the Obama Administration is not rational, and may result in a catastrophe for Israeli society, should images like those of the destruction of Gush Katif come back, under American pressure.

“We turn to Prime Minister Netanyahu: Say on this matter, too, that what the Americans demand of us is ‘bad for Israel and bad for the world,” just as you did about the emerging deal between the U.S. and the E.U. and Iran.

“What’s true about Iran is true seven times over right here, in our capital and our country.”