(JTA) -- White House officials agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's assessment that sanctions have not set back Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program, but counseled patience."We completely agree with the prime minister's assessment that Iran has failed to make that choice and that is absolutely a disappointment," Jay Carney, the White House front man, said Wednesday.
Netanyahu, meeting Sunday with Willard
MittRomney
...former governor of Massachussetts, currently the presumptive Publican nominee for president. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney's charisma is best defined as soporific, which is probably why he is leading the Publican field. On the plus side, he isn't President B.O...
, the presumptive Republican nominee, expressed skepticism about the sanctions.
"We have to be honest and say that all the diplomacy and sanctions and diplomacy so far have not set back the Iranian program by one iota,” he told Romney.
The B.O. regime has for months been making the case to Netanyahu that he should delay any plans to strike Iran until it exhausts peaceful options.
Asked about Netanyahu's comments in a call Tuesday with news hounds, Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, also agreed with the Israeli leader.
"We continue to be dissatisfied, as Prime Minister Netanyahu is, with IranÂ’s continued failure to live up to its international obligations," he said.