US urged to seek better deal to halt Iran’s ‘free path to bomb’

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged the United States to seek a better deal to curb Iran’s nuclear programme and said he would press American lawmakers not to give Tehran “a free path to the bomb”.

Netanyahu, in the first of several appearances on US news shows, said he has spoken with both Democrats and Republicans in Congress — nearly two thirds of House of Representatives members and a similar number in the US Senate — about the Iran nuclear issue.

The Israeli prime minister has been strongly critical of the framework agreement struck last Thursday between world powers and Iran, saying it does not do enough to protect Israel.