Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday urged self-proclaimed president-elect Joe Biden not to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, saying Israel would push back against American efforts to do so.
“Do not return to the previous nuclear deal,” Netanyahu said at a memorial service for Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.
“We must stick to an uncompromising policy to ensure that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons,” he added.
According to Netanyahu, Israel’s “categorical position against Iran’s nuclearization” as well as its opposition to the Obama-led nuclear deal was instrumental in generating a sea change among Arab countries regarding their attitudes towards Israel.
Biden has called for the U.S. to revert to the nuclear accord known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between world powers and Iran.
President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in May 2018 and began enacting crippling sanctions on Tehran. The Islamic Republic’s ayatollah regime would be unlikely to survive four more years of sanctions.
Iran has already said a U.S. return to the deal would be conditioned on the receipt of compensation for the damage caused by the Trump administration’s sanctions.
In a landmark 2015 address before a joint meeting of Congress, Netanyahu spoke out harshly against the deal, raising the ire of the Obama administration, which included then-national security adviser Susan Rice. Rice is believed to be a front runner for secretary of state in a Biden administration.
Israel has made it clear the Iran deal’s “sunset clause,” which caps the time that restrictions could be imposed, will allow Iran to become nuclear in well under a decade.
The deal also failed to curb Iran’s ballistic missile program and did nothing to stop Iranian backing for proxy terror groups like Hezbollah.
Following Israeli strikes on Iranian militias in Syria overnight Saturday, Iran warned Israel of a “crushing response.”
“The Zionist regime is well aware that the era of hit and run is over and therefore they are very cautious,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in remarks carried by the AFP news agency.
He also added that “the future of relations between Iran and the United States is not simple.”
Any attempts to reenter the nuclear deal “does not mean that Iran is forgetting this list of crimes,” he said.
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