US President Joe Biden on Monday declared that Iran would “never get a nuclear weapon on my watch,” after affirming an “iron-clad” relationship between the U.S. and Israel, Politico reports.
Biden’s comments, in an Oval Office meeting with Israel’s outgoing president, Reuven Rivlin, came after the U.S. launched airstrikes against Iranian-linked facilities on the Iraq-Syria border on Sunday evening.
Biden said he launched the strikes under the authority of Article II of the Constitution. He also said the U.S. backed recent normalization deals between Israel and countries in the Middle East and Africa.
The Biden administration has recently struggled with negotiating the revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal following the election of that country’s new president, the ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi.
Then-President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Raisi for his alleged role in human rights abuses, but Iranian officials have implied they need to be lifted if the nuclear deal is to be salvaged.
Should the deal be revived, the U.S. would lift a variety of sanctions and Iran would end many of its nuclear activities.
