WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry sought Tuesday to rebut critics of a potential nuclear deal with Iran, making his case on Capitol Hill just a week before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is scheduled to deliver his broadside against the emerging accord in an address to Congress.
“Anybody running around right now, jumping in to say, ‘Well, we don’t like the deal,’ or this or that, doesn’t know what the deal is,” Mr. Kerry said. “There is no deal yet. And I caution people to wait and see what these negotiations produce.”
At another point, Mr. Kerry asserted that Mr. Netanyahu had been wrong about the Obama administration’s policy toward Iran in the past. The prime minister, Mr. Kerry said, had denounced a 2013 interim accord to freeze much of Iran’s nuclear program only to belatedly acknowledge that it was in Israel’s interest.
“I don’t know anybody who looks at the interim agreement and doesn’t say, ‘Wow, this has really worked’— including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who would like to see it extended, having opposed it vehemently in the beginning, calling it the deal of the century for Iran,” Mr. Kerry said.
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“We’re looking for a deal that will prove over the long term that each pathway to a bomb is closed off,” Mr. Kerry said.
Jodi Rudoren contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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