Obama, Saudi Foreign Minister Meet to Discuss Iran Deal

The US announced Wednesday that Defense Secretary Ash Carter would be in the region next week, including a visit to Saudi Arabia but Kerry said he will follow Carter’s trip with his own travel August 3 to Qatar to meet with GCC countries and conduct a briefing about the Iran nuclear deal. The paper says the report “provides ammunition to both sides in the battle brewing on Capitol Hill” over the nuclear agreement reached last week with Iran. We absolutely have no starry-eyed naivety about the Iranian regime.

Minister Al-Jubeir and Secretary Kerry reiterated their firm commitment to the strong bilateral relationship.

“Well, that’s wrong, too”, Obama said adding that with this deal, U.S. will have unprecedented, 24/7 monitoring of Iran’s key nuclear facilities.

“We’ll remain in close consultation with Congress throughout the review period”, Schultz said.

“J Street wants Congress to know that, despite some loud opposition to the deal coming from Jewish organizational leaders, our polling suggests that a clear majority of Jewish Americans agrees with us and backs the deal”, the group said in a statement.

The president staked enormous political capital on the diplomatic pursuit with Iran, deeply straining relations with Israel and sparking outrage from some congressional lawmakers.

Video: “Without Deal We Risk More War”.

The debate over Iran diplomacy was really two debates, in which each side was arguing over something different. “Numerous restrictions that were supposed to prevent it from getting there will be lifted”, he said in a speech at the start of a meeting with Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders on Tuesday.

‘And Iran’s nuclear program will be under severe limits for many years.

But even as Republicans who control Congress sharpened their criticism, Obama’s top aides stepped up their defense of the historic deal to restrict Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Obama said Israel, widely assumed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed state, had legitimate concerns about Iran’s threat to its security but insisted that danger would be compounded if Iran acquired a nuclear weapon.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said the agreement proved that “constructive engagement works”, while his United States counterpart Barack Obama called it a step towards a “more hopeful world”.