(DCWatchdog.com) – Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid has sounded the alarm that President Joe Biden is yielding too much ground to the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the negotiations to restore a prior nuclear deal, a development that may see the Iranians being able to produce nuclear weapons.
For the past year, the Biden administration has been involved on and off in negotiations to resume a 2015 nuclear agreement championed by then-President Barack Obama, in which Iran committed to limiting its nuclear program in exchange for the easing of Western sanctions.
The deal was deemed too lenient towards the Iranian regime by many in the US and Israel, and in 2018, then-President Donald Trump withdrew America from the agreement.
Biden has been trying to resurrect the agreement, but top-ranking Israeli officials are alarmed that this could backfire in Iran’s favor, The Washington Examiner reported.
“We are against this agreement, because it is a bad one… In our eyes, it does not meet the standards set by President Biden himself: preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear state,” Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid declared on Wednesday.
The talks between the US and Iran have been mediated by the European Union, which has proposed a draft agreement and is awaiting the American response.
“Our review [of the document] has now concluded. We have responded to the EU today,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price informed on Wednesday.
During the negotiations, Iran has tried to force Biden to lift sanctions slapped on it by Trump for sponsoring terrorism and to end an international investigation on nuclear materials against it, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“The Iranians are making demands again. The negotiators are ready to make concessions again. This is not the first time this has happened. The countries of the West draw a red line, the Iranians ignore it, and the red line moves,” Israeli leader Lapid stated, slamming the Biden administration.
“The terrible deal with Iran … casts a heavy shadow on our security and our future,” weighed in former long-time Israeli Prime Minister and current opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who was adamantly opposed to Obama’s 2015 deal with the Iranians.
Even though Lapid and Netanyahu are rivals, they think the new deal “would give Iran a hundred billion dollars a year,” as the former put it.
“It will be used to strengthen Iran’s nuclear program. Iran will assist other nations facing sanctions to evade them. They will be able to create a direct route for financing terror,” Lapid said.
Israel accuses Biden of letting Iran defy nuclear 'red line' in negotiations https://t.co/yP3A3Pvpyw
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) August 24, 2022
