In an interview with Atlantic magazine on Friday, US President Barack Obama said the US is “not taking any option off the table” in order to stop Iran’s nuclear energy program.
“It includes a military component. And I think people understand that,” Obama said three days before a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington.
“I think both the Iranian and the Israeli governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say,” the US president said.
At the same time, Obama warned Israel to be mindful of “the profound costs of any military action” and its “potential unintended consequences.”
The United States, Israel and some of their allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear energy program, using this pretext to impose sanctions against Iran, with Washington and Tel Aviv threatening to attack Iran to stop its nuclear activities.
This is while several countries including Russia and China as well as senior US officials have repeatedly warned against attacking Iran as such a strike will have dire consequences for not only the Middle East, but for the entire world.
On February 27, Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said if Israel attacks Iran “the consequences will be truly catastrophic, their real scope impossible to imagine.”
Earlier in February Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey also warned that an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would be imprudent, destabilizing and would not serve the interests of anybody, especially the Israelis.
Iran has denied the allegations and promised a crushing response to any military strike against the country, warning that any such measure could result in a war that would spread beyond the Middle East.
MYA/AZ/MA
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