U.S. Will Remain Tough on Iran, Obama Tells Arab Newspaper

By MICHAEL D. SHEARMAY 12, 2015

WASHINGTON — Ahead of a two-day meeting with senior officials from a half-dozen Persian Gulf countries, President Obama on Tuesday defended his efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, but promised that the United States would not stop trying to prevent Iranian aggression against other nations in the region.

“Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism,” Mr. Obama said in written answers submitted to a Middle Eastern newspaper and published in English and Arabic. “It helps prop up the Assad regime in Syria. It supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It aids the Houthi rebels in Yemen. So countries in the region are right to be deeply concerned about Iran’s activities, especially its support for violent proxies inside the borders of other nations.

The president said the meetings this week, which include a daylong session at Camp David on Thursday, were intended to deepen cooperation with Saudi Arabia and other gulf countries, but he offered no details about new American commitments to the region. Leaders of those nations have expressed anxiety about the future of United States support in the wake of the Iranian negotiations.

Mr. Obama said in his written answers to the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat that the United States would remain “vigilant against Iran’s other reckless behavior” in the region by maintaining a military presence and helping gulf nations to deter aggression.

“We’ve continued to fully enforce sanctions against Iran for its support of terrorism and its ballistic missile program — and we will enforce these sanctions going forward, even if we reach a nuclear deal with Iran,” Mr. Obama said.

On other issues in the region, the president vowed that he would “never give up on the hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians,” but conceded that “we now have a very difficult path forward.” He called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to demonstrate a commitment to a two-state solution.

He also rejected criticism of remarks he made in an interview last month with The New York Times, when he referred to “Sunni youth” in the Middle East who need to “feel that they’ve got something other than” the Islamic State “to choose from.” Mr. Obama said he had spent his life “working to bridge perceived divisions of race, ethnicity and religion that too often prevent people from working together.”

But he added that sectarianism was an issue in the region, saying the Islamic State “peddles a distorted and false version of Islam, and most of its victims are other Muslims — innocent men, women and children.”

He said the meetings with gulf leaders this week would focus on “how our nations can work together to help resolve some of the region’s most pressing conflicts which have allowed these extremists to thrive.”