Israel warned that the Biden administration’s willingness to restart negotiations with Iran to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal “will pave the way for Iran to a nuclear arsenal,” according to a report .
“Israel remains committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and its position on the nuclear deal has not changed,” the prime minister’s office said, the Jerusalem Post reported.
“Israel believes that a return to the old agreement will pave the way for Iran to a nuclear arsenal. Israel is in close contact with the United States on this issue,” he added.
On Thursday, the State Department said Washington would accept an invitation to meet with the countries that negotiated the original agreement (Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and Iran) to “discuss a diplomatic path to follow. on the Iranian nuclear program “.
“We are ready to present ourselves if this meeting takes place,” a US official told Reuters.
In 2018, the Trump administration withdrew from the deal three years after it was administered by the Obama administration. The agreement eased sanctions against Tehran in exchange for the country reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium needed to power nuclear weapons.
Since the U.S. withdrawal, Iran has admitted it has breached the 2015 agreement by using advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium in an underground plant.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has opposed the deal with Iran from the outset.
A senior European Union official said on Friday that the EU was working on organizing an informal meeting with all participants in the nuclear deal and the US.
No invitation has been sent and there is no deadline for the meeting, but world powers want to reactivate the nuclear deal as soon as possible, the official added, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said US sanctions must be lifted before his country can consider re-complying with the agreement.
When the sanctions are lifted, “we will immediately reverse all corrective measures. Simple, ”Zarif said on Twitter.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Tehran was considering Washington’s offer to talk about reactivating the nuclear deal.
“It simply came to our notice then. Then, as part of the 2015 agreement, a mechanism to basically synchronize the steps can be discussed, ”the official said.
Tehran has set a deadline of February 23 for the United States to begin reversing sanctions, otherwise it said it would take the biggest step to breach the deal: banning short-term inspections by the nuclear watchdog. the UN.
With publishing cables