President Barack Obama signaled that he isn’t convinced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeming to backtrack on hardline comments opposing the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Shortly after Netanyahu won re-election he seemed to backtrack on earlier hardline statements during the run-up to the election saying that he was committed to Palestinian statehood.
Obama, in an interview with The Huffington Post published on Saturday, said his administration is operating with the view that Netanyahu still doesn’t support the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“We take him at his word when he said that it wouldn’t happen during his prime ministership, and so that’s why we’ve got to evaluate what other options are available to make sure that we don’t see a chaotic situation in the region,” Obama said in the interview conducted Friday.
Obama, in the same interview, said Iran has not made the offers needed to get to a final nuclear weapons deal, but talks are getting closer to a compromise.
“Frankly,” Obama also said, “they have not yet made the kind of concessions that are I think going to be needed for a final deal to get done. But they have moved, and so there’s the possibility.”
Earlier in the day Secretary of State John Kerry said that the U.S. had made progress with Iran on a nuclear deal.
