Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the U.S. government on the 22nd not to return to the 2015 comprehensive agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue.
Netanyahu said on the same day at an annual event in memory of former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion: “There should be no return to the previous nuclear agreement. We must adhere to an uncompromising policy to ensure that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons.
Reuters reported that Netanyahu did not directly name the name in his speech, but most of the Israeli media interpreted this statement as Netanyahu’s message to the next President of the United States that he hoped that he would not bring the United States back to the Iran nuclear agreement.
Netanyahu believes that Israel’s position towards Iran will help Israel improve its relations with some Arab countries. Israel has normalized relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan in recent months under the mediation of the United States.
Iran reached an Iran nuclear agreement with the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany in July 2015. Netanyahu publicly opposed the agreement in his speech to the United States Congress in March of that year, highlighting his differences with then-US President Barack Obama.
In May 2018, the current U.S. President Donald Trump announced his unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement, and then restarted and added a series of sanctions against Iran. However, other relevant parties in the six countries on the Iranian nuclear issue are still committed to maintaining the Iran nuclear agreement. Iran also denied that its atomic energy project was aimed at developing weapons.
The New York Times revealed that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others have recently successfully discouraged Trump from launching a military attack on a major Iranian nuclear facility. The website of the Times of Israel reported on the 22nd that a State Department official accompanying Pompeo’s visit said that “all options for U.S. policy towards Iran are still on the table” and that the Trump administration will “continue to implement [with Iran] policy until the end of his term”.
The presidential election in the United States was held on the 3rd of this month. The final vote count has not yet been released, but according to the estimates of many mainstream media in the United States, Democratic candidate Joe Biden won more votes than Trump and will become the next President of the United States. Biden is the vice president under Obama’s presidency. During his presidential election, he promised to renegotiate the terms of the Iran nuclear agreement and return to the agreement after winning the election.
According to the website of the Times of Israel, Iran does not seem to exclude negotiations with the new U.S. government. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif said on the 17th that Iran is willing to resume the full implementation of the Iran nuclear agreement if the United States lifts sanctions against Iran.
In response to the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the agreement, Iran has suspended the implementation of some provisions of the Iran nuclear agreement in stages since May last year.
