Barack Obama rejects Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for Iran to recognize Israel

Netanyahu has been a vocal critic of the Iranian nuclear talks. | AP Photo

President Barack Obama is rejecting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for Iran to recognize the state of Israel as part of a final nuclear deal.

“The notion that we would condition Iran not getting nuclear weapons in a verifiable deal on Iran recognizing Israel is really akin to saying that we won’t sign a deal unless the nature of the Iranian regime completely transforms. And that is, I think, a fundamental misjudgment,” Obama said in an interview with NPR on Monday.

On Friday, Netanyahu, a vocal critic of the Iranian nuclear talks, said that a nuclear deal with Iran must include “unambiguous Iranian recognition of Israel’s right to exist.” The Obama administration announced that the U.S., Iran and other world powers had reached a preliminary ‘framework’ agreement on Thursday.

“I want to return to this point: we want Iran not to have nuclear weapons precisely because we can’t bank on the nature of the regime changing. That’s exactly why we don’t want [Iran] to have nuclear weapons. If suddenly Iran transformed itself to Germany or Sweden or France then there would be a different set of conversations about their nuclear infrastructure,” Obama told NPR.

The full interview between the president and NPR will be published on Tuesday.