Obama, speaking along with Netanyahu to reporters in the Oval Office, said after the two-hour meeting that he saw no reason to set an artificial deadline for diplomacy with Iran, but the U.S. would like to see progress with Tehran by the end of the year.
The US president said he expects a positive response from his diplomatic outreach to Iran on stopping its nuclear program by the end of the year. He said the United States wanted to bring Iran into the world community but declared "we're not going to have talks forever." Obama said he was not closing off a "range of steps" against Iran, including sanctions, if it continues its nuclear program.
"Iran is a country of extraordinary history and extraordinary potential and we want them to be a full-fledged member of the international community, and be in a position to provide opportunity and prosperity for their people but that the way to achieve those goals is not through the pursuit of a nuclear weapon," Obama said.
Obama also reminded Israel of its commitment, under a 2003 U.S.-backed peace road map agreement to cease settlement activity in the West Bank.
While his language was gentle, Obama's words were notable nonetheless for being made in public.
"We have seen progress stalled on this front, and I suggested to the prime minister that he has a historic opportunity to get a serious movement on this issue during his tenure," Obama said. "That means that all the parties involved have to take seriously obligations that they have previously agreed to."
Added Obama: "I think that there is no reason why we should not seize this opportunity and this moment."
"We talked about restarting serious negotiations on issues of Israel and the Palestinians," Obama said, adding that it was in the interests of both sides "to achieve a two-state solution."
Asked about recent comments by Israeli officials who stated that progress with the Palestinians was contingent on progress with curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions, Obama said he saw the issue of linkage the other way around. He suggested that improvement with the Israel-Palestinian conflict would make it easier to enlist broader support with the international community to keep Iran from acquiring weapons, but nodded his head when Netanyahu added that neither country was linking the policy between the two issues.
Netanyahu, in his remarks, did not respond publicly to Obama's comment that Israel must stop expanding Jewish settlements in West Bank but reiterated that he supported self-government for the Palestinians but made no mention of a state, a position underscoring a rare rift in U.S.-Israeli relations.
“We’re ready to do our share, we hope the Palestinians will do their share as well,” Mr. Netanyahu said. If the Palestinians recognized Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and met Israeli security conditions, he said, “I think we can envision an arrangement where Palestinians and Israelis live side-by-side.”
"We don't want to govern the Palestinians. We want them to govern themselves," Netanyahu said, echoing statements he has made in the past.Netanyahu warned that a nuclear Iran would pose a threat to the entire world, not just Israel. "It could give the nuclear umbrella to terrorists or worse, it could actually give nuclear weapons to terrorists I believe it would put all of us in great peril," he said.
He added that in his 59 years of life -- the modern Jewish state is only 61 years old -- he has never seen the Arabs and Jews so closely share the same threat as the one they both face from Iran.
