WASHINGTON—Iranian actions, such as a ballistic missile test conducted last weekend, won’t derail the nuclear agreement with Tehran, President Barack Obama said Friday.
Iran has violated the test ban repeatedly, and the absence of a nuclear deal wouldn’t spur improved behavior, the president said. In a news conference at the White House, he vowed to continue to enforce sanctions on the ballistic missile program.
Iran’s state news agency reported last weekend the government had test-fired a new long-range, surface-to-surface ballistic missile, a move the White House has said may have violated a United Nations Security Council resolution.
While White House officials have said the violation wouldn’t affect the nuclear agreement, Mr. Obama is under pressure from some lawmakers to outline specifically how the U.S. will respond to the violation.
The president didn’t raise the specter of new sanctions but said the U.S. would review any violations of U.N. resolutions, as it has in the past, and would deal with them as the U.S. has always done.
The nuclear agreement solves one specific problem—making sure that Iran doesn’t develop a nuclear weapon, Mr. Obama said.
“It does not fully resolve the wide range of big issues where we have a big difference,” he said.
Mr. Obama on Friday also condemned recent violence directed against innocent people in Jerusalem, saying that Israeli and Palestinian leaders should focus now on preventing future attacks and discouraging inflammatory rhetoric.
“I don’t think we can wait for all the issues that exist between Israel and Palestine to be settled for us to try to tamp down violence right now,” Mr. Obama said.
The past few weeks have brought a spate of attacks in Jerusalem as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has escalated.
Administration officials are poised to make a new push to ease tensions in an effort to ensure that violence doesn’t spark broader upheaval. Secretary of State John Kerry plans to travel to the region soon to try to calm tensions. The U.S. has lost influence with leaders on both sides, though, and the administration abandoned peace talks in the Middle East last year.
Dow Jones Business News, October 16, 2015
