Visit to Washington, phone calls to Macron, invitations to the foreign press: Israel is leading an offensive of “last minuteto try to convince the West not to renew the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program.
Western powers mustto ceaseto negotiate because an agreement will allow Iran to win “billion” of dollars and “destabilize” the Middle East, thus pleaded Wednesday August 24 the Israeli Prime Minister Yaïr Lapid. In the midst of the campaign for the Israeli legislative elections on November 1, he dispatched his national security adviser to Washington this week. And the Minister of Defense, Benny Gantz, flies away early Thursday for the American capital to discuss, among other things, Iranian nuclear power, his teams told AFP.
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Iran’s number one enemy, Israel welcomed the disengagement of Donald Trump’s United States from the international Iranian nuclear agreement (JCPOA) in 2018, but fears these days a renewal of the pact in when the talks seem to be picking up speed. Washington indicated this week that Tehran had made concessions. According to a senior US official, Iran is no longer blocking certain inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) when it previously demanded that the agency cease its investigation of undeclared sites where traces of enriched uranium had been found. Tehran has also dropped another requirement, relating to the lifting of the designation “terroristof the Revolutionary Guards, his ideological army.
Despite everything, Israel still opposes the renewal of the agreement, especially if it means the lifting of economic sanctions against Tehran. “What is on the table right now is a bad deal. This will give Iran $100 billion a year. This money will not be used to build schools or hospitals but will be used to destabilize the Middle East (…) by strengthening Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad“Said Yaïr Lapid without explaining what this figure was based on. “In our eyes, the agreement does not meet the criteria set by (US) President Joe Biden himself: to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state.said the Prime Minister during a meeting with the foreign press in Jerusalem. A senior Israeli official criticized the draft agreement for not providing for the destruction of the centrifuges and therefore allowing Tehran to “to restartwhen he deems it appropriate.
Another deal?
In recent days, Yair Lapid has urged French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz not to sign an agreement with Tehran. “I told them that these negotiations had reached a point where they had to be stopped“, he said Wednesday, arguing that the Jewish state “is not against an agreement by definition, but against this agreementwithout, however, giving a list of the elements that would make a pact acceptable. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a hardliner with Tehran, on Tuesday urged US President Joe Biden to “refrain, even at this last minute, from signing an agreement with Iran“. On Wednesday, the Israeli press wondered whether the government really thought it could convince the West to leave the negotiating table or whether it was not rather beginning to get used to the idea of a return of the JCPOA.
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In parallel with the talks, Israel is engaged in negotiations with Lebanon, under the aegis of the United States, on their maritime border in order to remove the obstacles to the prospecting and extraction of hydrocarbons in the eastern Mediterranean. Is there a “contradictionbetween, on the one hand, opposing an agreement with Iran, which supports Hezbollah, but on the other, wishing for an agreement with Lebanon, where Hezbollah dominates political life? A senior Israeli official answered in the negative on Wednesday. Israel believes that an agreement with Lebanon could allow the Lebanese state to replenish its coffers, through foreign companies involved in prospecting, without this strengthening Hezbollah, estimated this official. And to add:I see no reason to have a confrontation with Hezbollah on this issue“.
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