Israeli president willing to meet Iran’s Rouhani

Israeli President Shimon Peres said Sunday he’s willing to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

“Iran is not our enemy,” he told CNN correspondent Richard Quest at the Globes Israel Business Conference in Tel Aviv, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Peres, whose position is merely ceremonial, compared such a meeting to Israel’s decision to meet the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat ahead of the Oslo peace accords in the 1990s.

{mosads}Other political players in Iran, however, cloud the peace negotiations, Peres said.

“If it was only [Rouhani] I’d take it with greater assurance, but there are other structures, other people. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, half army and half organization, spreads terror all over the world and I’m not so sure they support the president. We have to see the balance of the situation,” he said, according to the Post.

On Saturday, President Obama said at Brookings Institution’s Saban Forum he believes there’s a 50 percent or less chance of achieving a final deal with Iran that would suspend its nuclear program.

The U.S., along with four of its allies, reached a deal two weeks ago that curbs Iran’s nuclear program for the next six months.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly slammed the deal. As a result, he warned the world is a more dangerous place.

Netanyahu is slated to speak at the Saban Forum Sunday morning via satellite.