Obama on Iran: 'I don't bluff'

[steve2470]

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-interview-iran-20120302,0,7234351.story

President Obama's goal in upcoming talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to persuade him that the United States "has Israel's back" so that Israel has no need to rush toward air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, the president said in a newly published interview.

In a meeting at the White House on Monday, the president told journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, he will try to persuade the Israeli leader that an attack now would backfire at a time when Iran is under increasing international pressure.

In an interview granted earlier this week and posted on the Atlantic magazine's website Friday morning, Goldberg reported that Obama is dismissive of a strategy of containment as unworkable and called it "unacceptable" for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

Obama said he plans to tell Netanyahu that he will order military strikes against Iran's nuclear program if the current international sanctions are not successful in deterring its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The possibility of an American strike against Iran is a serious one, Goldberg reported.