Obama: It was not necessary to fire a single missile to stop Iran's nuclear program Barack Obama, former president of the United States, on the war with Iran: The initial justification was that we wanted to intervene and force Iran to give up its nuclear program and nuclear weapons. But the problem was that Iran didn't have nuclear weapons, because I made a deal that everybody admitted would prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. I didn't even have to fire a missile to do it. It was enough to enter into diplomatic negotiations.