Boehner: Iran has 'no intention' of keeping its word on nuclear deal

Iran has “no intention” of keeping its word on an agreement being negotiated in Switzerland over its nuclear programme, House speaker John Boehner said on Sunday.

The top Republican’s comments came as negotiations in Lausanne approached the 31 March deadline for the drafting of a framework for a deal, under intense criticism from Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.

Speaking on CNN, Boehner said he had serious doubts about the talks.

“We’ve got a regime that’s never quite kept their word about anything,” he said. “I just don’t understand why we would sign an agreement with a group of people who have no intention of keeping their word.”

If there was no agreement, Boehner said he would move “very” quickly to impose new sanctions on Iran.

“The sanctions are going to come and they are going to come quickly,” he said.

Boehner deepened a rift with President Barack Obama when he invited Netanyahu to address Congress earlier this month without first informing the White House. The invite strained Obama’s already awkward relationship with the Israeli premier.

“I think the animosity exhibited by this administration toward the prime minister of Israel is reprehensible,” said Boehner. “And I think the pressure they have put on him over the past four or five years frankly pushed him to the point where he had to speak up.”

Boehner said Netanyahu had clearly highlighted the threat he said Iran’s nuclear programme represents, “not only to the Middle East but to the rest of the world”.

Netanyahu denounced the talks once again on Sunday. “I am deeply troubled by the emerging agreement with Iran in the nuclear talks,” he said at the start of a cabinet meeting. “The agreement confirms all of our fears and even worse.”

Boehner said: “The president doesn’t want to talk about [Iran]. Doesn’t want to talk about the fact that he has no strategy to deal with it. When you begin to see all these leaks that presumably came out of the White House about what the Iranian deal was going to be, there is a lot of concern in Congress on a bipartisan basis.”