While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been forced to praise the US-Iran deal and to choose words that appease US President Donald Trump, Israeli military and political officials expressed deep concern over the emerging agreement, likely to be officially signed next Friday. <\/p>\n
Israeli officials fear the deal may fail to eliminate the threats posed by Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and could also restrict Israel’s freedom of action against Hezbollah in Lebanon. <\/p>\n
Officials said Israel cannot return to the reality before the October 7, 2023, attack, when it says its hands were tied while threats built up along its borders. <\/p>\n
Current Israeli government officials have said little about the Trump-Iran understanding, apparently for fear of upsetting the US leader. Instead, the Israeli military leaked statements on behalf of a \u201csenior military source\u201d expressing concern about the cessation of operations in Lebanon. <\/p>\n
Israeli officials said the text of the agreement remains \u201can enigma,\u201d not explicitly speaking about the dismantling of the Iranian nuclear program, the obliteration of Iran\u2019s ballistic missile arsenal and production capacity, and Iran\u2019s ability to connect itself to its proxies. They listed Israel\u2019s five main problems with the proposal: <\/p>\n
First, there are no clear answers regarding the treatment of Iran\u2019s stockpile of enriched uranium, and not enough curbs on Iran\u2019s nuclear program. <\/p>\n
Second, the text of the deal does not clearly mention Iran\u2019s intention to stop the production of ballistic missiles. <\/p>\n
Third, the key unresolved question is how much funds Iran will receive. A compromise has been reached: Iran will not receive cash, but will be able to purchase medicine and food using frozen funds. The Americans insist that frozen assets will not be released before the uranium stockpiles are addressed, but that issue will be negotiated later. <\/p>\n
Fourth, the deal lays out no clear mechanism for forcing Iran to halt its support for its proxy forces, including Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas. <\/p>\n
Fifth, Israel had not been a party to the Trump administration\u2019s negotiations with Iran and is being left out of the potential peace. <\/p>\n
Yedioth Ahronoth quoted a senior Israeli official saying on Saturday evening that the agreement expected to be signed between the United States and Iran is \u201cnot a good deal,\u201d warning that Israel has little ability to influence the process despite the direct impact it could have on its security. <\/p>\n
The official said the deal would be followed by negotiations expected to last 60 days. The resources Iran would receive during the roughly two months of negotiations and afterward could, at least in theory, allow the regime to rebuild its nuclear project and its ballistic missile program. <\/p>\n
The newspaper said the American president is acting according to his own political and US interests. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe frequent calls between Netanyahu and Trump appear to have only marginal influence. Israel is not only failing to shape the talks, it also does not really know what is happening inside them,\u201d it wrote. <\/p>\n
Trump and Netanyahu spoke by phone about the emerging deal with Iran, according to the Prime Minister\u2019s Office. <\/p>\n
In a statement that intended to downplay the significance of the potential agreement, Netanyahu\u2019s office said the two spoke about \u201cthe emerging memorandum of understanding with Iran regarding entry into negotiations.\u201d <\/p>\n
In the conversation, Netanyahu expressed a rather optimistic take on an agreement, according to his office. <\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough Israel is not a party to the memorandum of understanding,\u201d his office said, \u201cthe prime minister expressed his appreciation for President Trump\u2019s commitment that the final agreement reached at the conclusion of the negotiations will include the removal of enriched material, the dismantling of enrichment infrastructure, limitations on missile production, and the cessation of Iran\u2019s support for its terrorist proxies in the region.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been forced to praise the US-Iran deal and to choose words…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-493515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}