TEHRAN - Former US President Barack Obama says the troubled progress of negotiations with Iran is a reminder that Washington cannot “just bully our way or bomb our way to solutions,” arguing that diplomacy remains the only viable path toward resolving disputes with Tehran.

In excerpts from an interview released on ABC News’ This Week, Obama said the slow pace of efforts to reach a new agreement with Iran underscores the limits of coercion and military force.

“The troubled progress of these negotiations is a reminder that we can’t just bully our way or bomb our way to solutions,” Obama said. “You’d think we would have learned that lesson by now.”

His remarks amount to a rare acknowledgment by a former US president that decades of pressure, sanctions, and military threats against Iran have failed to produce the results sought by Washington.

Obama also said it is unrealistic to expect that any future agreement with Iran would be significantly better than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the landmark 2015 nuclear deal reached during his administration.

“It is doubtful that any agreement that arises is going to be significantly different or a significant improvement from the deal that we had in the first place,” he said.

The former president defended the JCPOA, noting that it functioned effectively until the United States abandoned it. “Our deal worked for a long stretch of time before the United States pulled out of it,” Obama said.

His comments contrast sharply with Donald Trump’s repeated criticism of both Obama and the JCPOA. Trump frequently labeled the accord the “worst deal ever negotiated” and withdrew the United States from it in 2018 despite international assessments that Iran was complying with its commitments.

Following the withdrawal, Trump launched his so-called “maximum pressure” campaign, imposing sweeping sanctions on Iran in an effort to force Tehran to accept Washington’s demands. However, numerous American officials and analysts have since acknowledged that the policy failed to achieve its stated objectives while contributing to greater regional instability.

Obama further suggested that pursuing a realistic diplomatic agreement is preferable to insisting on maximalist demands that could lead to a broader military confrontation.

Iran and the United States are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding. The proposed framework is intended to help create conditions for permanently ending US-Israeli aggression against Iran and reducing tensions through diplomacy rather than confrontation.