JERUSALEM — Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Jerusalem on Sunday to reassure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that the US-Russia deal to secure Syria’s chemical weapons does not diminish American resolve to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon.
Seeing the deal through the prism of Iran, the Obama administration knows that its commitment to strike Iran if diplomacy fails is now under question.
President Obama said in an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC’s “This Week’’ that Iran understands that its nuclear program is ‘‘a far larger issue for us’’ than the use of chemical weapons in Syria and that the threat a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to Israel ‘‘is much closer to our core interests.’’
Obama said that Iran recognizes it should not draw the wrong conclusion because he made the decision not to launch a missile strike against Syria.
Netanyahu told Kerry that he has been closely monitoring the Syrian weapons diplomacy and supports it.
‘‘The Syrian regime must be stripped of all its chemical weapons,’’ Netanyahu said. ‘‘That would make our entire region a lot safer.’’
Kerry heads next to Paris for discussions about the Syria deal with foreign ministers from France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
Kerry warned that the use of military force by the United States remains on the table if Damascus does not comply with the agreement to identify and remove all its chemical weapons.
Netanyhu stressed that any action on Syria must be seen in the context of ‘‘the Syrian regime’s patron, Iran.’’
At the same time, diplomats in Israel worry that the push to have Syria sign and ratify a chemical weapons treaty, and allow for inspections of its arsenal, throws an unwelcome spotlight on the secretive chemical and nuclear arsenal that Israel has built next door.
Israel, which is presumed to have nuclear weapons and also is suspected of at least some chemical weapons capability, is worried that the Syria deal could reinvigorate calls that the entire Middle East be rid of weapons of mass destruction.
That theme is likely to run through much of the discussion of the Syria arrangement during the annual UN General Assembly later this month.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia earlier said that Syria’s chemical weapons exist as a response to Israel’s military capabilities. Russian diplomats have said that Syria’s chemical arsenal has served as a deterrent against Israel, which has not acknowledged possession of nuclear or chemical weapons.
Israel signed a chemical weapons convention in 1993, which signals a country’s intent to abide by an accord, but does not bind it to do so. Israel never ratified the treaty.
Netanyahu’s deputy foreign minister, Ze’ev Elkin, said in an interview Sunday that Israel does not intend to ratify the chemical weapons convention, because its neighbors still cannot be trusted.
‘‘Israel has its reasons not to ratify it,’’ Elkin said. ‘‘We are still facing these issues — such as calls to destroy the State of Israel from countries that still have access to these kinds of weapons.’’
Emily Landau, an expert in arms control at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said that Israel’s wariness is understandable. In 2005, for example, Syria in formal declarations told the United Nations that it had no chemical weapons, a claim that has been proved false.