The US and Israel are discussing what steps Iran could take that would be "verifiable and meaningful" and indicate that they are indeed stopping their nuclear program, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said before leaving the US Thursday evening.
Netanyahu made the comments in a 45-minute interview with PBS/CBS interviewer Charlie Rose, who pressed him to spell out the differences that existed between him and US President Barack Obama on the Iranian file.
Netanyahu praised Obama for saying publicly and privately that steps and transparent actions, not just words, were need from Iran. And "what we're talking about right now," he said, was "what are the meaningful actions that will do the job."
The Rose interview was one of eight high-profile interviews that Netanyahu gave to the US media since his speech at the UN Tuesday where he slammed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and vowed that Israel would take action alone, if necessary, to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
In addition to Rose, Netanyahu interviewed over the last two days with BBC's Persian language service, NBC's Andrea Mitchell, the Hispanic Univision network, CNN, Fox News, NPR and one of Sunday's major political talk shows.
In the BBC Persian service interview, a first for him, Netanyahu said that what he was saying to the world was to "keep up the pressure and for God's sake don't let them have nuclear weapons."
He said this was "not only for us," but also for the Americans, Europeans, Arabs and – you know what I am adding here – you the people of Iran, you the Persians. You don't want them to have nuclear weapons because you will never get rid of this tyranny if it is armed with nuclear weapons."
Netanyahu told Rose that he and Obama held three hours of talks on Monday. When asked whether they were both on the same page, Netanyahu said, "it was an open conversation between open minded people."
He said that he believed that the US and Israel, working together, can get to a common policy, and that the American position was not yet "crystallized."
The prime minister said there was no confrontation with Obama, and that Israel did not object to testing the diplomatic route. "The question is what is a deal that does it?" he asked.
Netanyahu made clear that at this point his biggest concern was that the talks could lead to a partial deal that would enable Iran to make some minor concessions that would not materially hurt their nuclear infrastructure in exchange for sanctions relief.
The prime minister quoted US Secretary of State John Kerry as saying that a bad deal on Iran is worse than no deal. "And I guess my point is that a partial deal is a bad deal. Because when you lift the sanctions for some minor stuff that they do, or partial thing that they do, it takes years to put the sanctions in place."
According to Netanyahu, there are "a lot of countries who are just waiting to lift the sanctions," something that could make the whole sanctions regime collapse. He said the last thing that Israel, the US or some "significant European countries" were interested in was to "let Iran wiggle away with a smile campaign."
Netanyahu, obviously intent on framing the Iranian issue as an American problem as much as an Israeli one, stressed on two different occasions that Tehran was developing inter-continental ballistic missiles to hit the US, since they already have the missile capacity to strike at Israel.
Regarding where Iran is in development of their nuclear program, Netanyahu explained that they are close to a point where they have enough enriched uranium at lower levels "to be able to punch through and enrich it very rapidly within a matter of weeks to get high, enriched uranium that could be used for a bomb."
Netanyahu took issue with the oft-heard argument that Iran has a "natural right to enrich uranium" by saying that countries do not need to enrich uranium – something needed for a military program – in order to harness nuclear power for civilian needs.
He said that 17 countries, including Canada and Mexico, have civilian nuclear energy without enriching uranium.
Netanyahu likened Iran, which he said is controlled by a "cult," to a suicide bomber. "We've had a lot of them. The suicide bomber, as he's driving on the way to board the bus, he obeys the traffic laws, he says the right things. Once he gets on the bus, bam."
Regarding the negotiations with the Palestinians, Netanyahu said that while it was true the Jews preceded them in Israel by "thousands of years," it was "true also that they're here." The crux of the negotiations, he said, was to create a situation where Israel did not get the worst of all worlds: leave land that is both strategically important and the Jewish people's historical cradle, and also "get Iran." Effectively, he said, when Israel left Lebanon and Gaza it received Iranian proxies in return.
“We cannot have it happen a third time," he said. "So we have to have a different arrangement. And that arrangement will mean that Israel will have to have a long-term military presence along the Jordan River to prevent this area, this Palestinian state, from being perforated by Iranian agents from Jordan."