US President Barack Obama has turned down calls by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make Iran’s recognition of the state of Israel a part of a deal on Tehran’s controversial nuclear program.

US President Barack Obama has turned down calls by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make Iran’s recognition of the state of Israel a part of a deal on Tehran’s controversial nuclear program.

“The notion that we would condition Iran not getting nuclear weapons in a verifiable deal on Iran recognizing Israel is really akin to saying that we won’t sign a deal unless the nature of the Iranian regime completely transforms. And that is, I think, a fundamental misjudgment,” Obama said in an interview with NPR on Monday.

The P5+1 powers (US, UK, China, Russia, France, and Germany) said that they agreed a preliminary framework of the much anticipated deal with Iran last Thursday.

The announcement was followed by demands from Netanyahu to include “unambiguous Iranian recognition of Israel’s right to exist” into the agreement.

The Israeli PM has been a persistent critic of the deal with Tehran, repeatedly stating that it “would not block Iran’s path to the bomb. It would pave it.”

“We want Iran not to have nuclear weapons precisely because we can’t bank on the nature of the regime changing. That’s exactly why we don’t want [Iran] to have nuclear weapons. If suddenly Iran transformed itself into Germany or Sweden or France, then there would be a different set of conversations about their nuclear infrastructure,” Obama said.

The US president reminded that “there are a whole host of countries in the Middle East that don't yet recognize 'Israel'.”