Barack Obama says it is unrealistic to expect that any deal between US President Donald Trump and Tehran would mark a “significant improvement” over his own nuclear pact 11 years ago, AFP reports.

In interview excerpts on ABC News talk show “This Week,” the former president also suggested it was better to negotiate a deal that falls short of all of Washington’s requirements in order to avoid an outright war.

“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,” Obama said, referring to 2015’s landmark pact that Trump abandoned.

Obama said his own deal “had worked for a long stretch of time before…the United States pulled out of it.”

Obama said the troubled progress of a new US-Iran deal is a reminder that Washington can not “just bully our way or bomb our way to solutions” instead of engaging in comprehensive diplomacy.

“You’d think we would have learned that lesson by now,” he said.