Obama at G-8 Summit: We Won’t Allow Iran To Develop Nuclear Weapons
President Obama said the international community is “not going to just wait indefinitely and allow for the development of a nuclear weapon” by Iran.
Speaking at a news conference in Italy on Friday at the conclusion of the G-8 summit, Obama said that the leaders of the eight economic powers agreeed to “reevaluate Iran’s posture towards negotiating the cessation of a nuclear weapons policy” at the G-20 meeting in September, specifically noting that the agreement “provides a timeframe” for Iran.
“The international community has said: Here’s a door you can walk through that allows you to lessen tensions and more fully join the international community,” Obama said. “If Iran chooses not to walk through that door, then you have on record the G-8, to begin with, but I think potentially a lot of other countries that are going to say we need to take further steps.”
He added, “My hope is that the Iranian leadership will look at the statement coming out of the G-8 and recognize that world opinion is clear.”
Obama said media reports that the U.S. failed to get other nations to sign on to increased sanctions on Iran were “not accurate.”
“What we wanted was exactly what we got, which is a statement of unity and strong condemnation about the appalling treatment of peaceful protestors post-election in Iran, as well as some behavior that just violates basic international norms: storming of embassies, arresting embassy personnel, restrictions on journalists,” Obama said.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
