Trust, but verify had been popular in the USSR when Gorbachev was in college, saying that "The reward of a thing well done is to have done it." Following the 2013 Ghouta attacks, Secretary of State John Kerry told a news conference in Geneva on September 14, 2013 that the United States and Russia had agreed on a framework to dispose of Syria's chemical weapons. He said "President Reagan's old adage about 'trust but verify' ... is in need of an update. And we have committed here to a standard that says 'verify and verify'." The similar phrase "Trust and Verify" was also
Negotiations leading to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action include President Barack Obama. Prominent opponents include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George P. Schultz, and Democratic Senator Bob Menendez. Obama has argued that failure of the negotiations would increase the chance of a military confrontation between the United States and Iran. In an interview with Thomas Friedman, Obama argued that an agreement would be the best chance to ease tensions between the US and Iran. Opponents have countered that the proposed deal would concede to Iran a vast nuclear infrastructure, giving it the status of a threshold nuclear state. They argue that