Israeli prime minister says Iran nuclear deal will fund terror in the region

Israel’s Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, has criticized this Wednesday the possible nuclear agreement with Iran assuring that it will allow Tehran to use 100 million euros a year to “sow terror all over the world”, especially in the region.

“Israel is not against any agreement. We are against this agreement because it is bad. Because it cannot be accepted as it is written at the moment,” the Israeli prime minister has said, as reported by ‘The Times of Israel’.

In this regard, he has explained that the agreement will be used to finance the Revolutionary Guard, as well as “more attacks on US bases in the Middle East.” “It will be used to strengthen Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” he added.

In this way, Lapid has assured that there is “an open dialogue” with the Biden Administration on these disagreements in view of the signing of a possible nuclear agreement. “The United States is and will remain our closest ally,” the Israeli Prime Minister concluded.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Tuesday also signaled his opposition to the emerging nuclear deal with Iran after Tehran dropped some of its key conditions, according to a senior U.S. official, as reported by ‘Haaretz’ newspaper.

Israeli national security adviser Eyal Hulata visited the White House on Tuesday, where he met with his US counterpart, Jake Sullivan, to raise Israel’s concerns about this latest draft that will set the roadmap for reviving the deal, as reported by Politico on Wednesday.

“Sullivan underscored (U.S.) President (Joe) Biden’s strong commitment to preserve and strengthen Israel’s ability to deter its enemies and defend itself against any threat or combination of threats, including from Iran and Iranian-backed proxies,” the White House said in a statement.

In the face of rising tensions, Israel’s former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Tuesday called on the United States on his official Twitter profile for Washington to refrain from signing a deal with Iran “at the last minute.”

“This agreement will send approximately a quarter of a billion dollars into the pocket of the Iranian terrorist administration and its regional proxies,” he warned, in the same vein as Lapid expressed himself on Wednesday.

For his part, the director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Mohammad Eslami, has indicated on Wednesday that, from Tehran, they accept an extension of the inspections of the nuclear safety agency “to guarantee reliability”, although they have urged the lifting of sanctions in exchange.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran from the beginning has carried out its own operations in the nuclear field on the basis of IAEA rules and regulations, and no operation is carried out without following the procedures,” he explained, as reported by the ISNA news agency.

The Brussels proposal is the umpteenth attempt to reach a new agreement, after the nuclear pact eventually collapsed following former President Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to take Washington off the negotiating table in 2018.

Interested parties have been closely watching the next U.S. maneuver, after the European Union announced that it had received a “reasonable” response from Iran to its proposal a week ago.

World powers have spent nearly 18 months trying to negotiate a deal that would restore strict limits on Iran’s nuclear activity in exchange for the United States relaxing some of its sanctions on the Persian republic’s economy, including that imposed on its oil exports.