Time.news – Getting bogged down in negotiations on Iranian nuclear power pushed Israel to explicitly put the military option into play to prevent Tehran from acquiring the atomic bomb. The diagnosis on the state of the dialogue underway in Vienna appeared disheartening both for the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and for the counterparts of the three European countries involved in the negotiation (France, Germany and Great Britain), met in a restricted summit in occasion of the Liverpool G7 ministerial. “There is no progress, due to the Iranian government’s offer, the negotiations went back six months“, noted the new German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock,” Time is running out “.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz in the United States to persuade Washington to increase pressure on the Islamic Republic, revealed yesterday that he had ordered the army to prepare for a possible military attack on Tehran. In an interview with Foreign Policy last September, Gantz said he was willing to “tolerate” a reinstatement of the JCPOA, the agreement, torn apart by the US in 2018, which was struck to monitor Iran’s civilian nuclear program and make sure it does not developed the atomic weapon. The new president of Iran, the ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi, however, did not bring the negotiations back to the promising track followed by his predecessor, the pragmatic Hassan Rohani. On the contrary, in recent months uranium enrichment has undergone a worrying acceleration and the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (Aiea) no longer have the necessary access to the plants.
The Vienna talks did not bring results, Gantz noted, and other countries have realized that Tehran is “fooling them” and “buying time because it is playing poker with a bad hand.” According to reports from well-informed sources to the Israeli press, last Thursday Gantz would have updated the Pentagon on the deadline necessary for the armed forces of the Jewish state to be ready to attack Iran. From Washington, the sources add, “no veto has come”. Last Thursday Gantz met with both his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, and Blinken. The US authorities also received an invitation to stop the settlements of settlers in the Palestinian territories to favor a solution with “two peoples and two states”, the sources said.
According to Gantz, Tehran is amassing troops in the West “to attack nations and armies in the Middle East in general and Israel in particular“.” We are preparing for any such attempt and will do whatever it takes to protect our citizens and our resources, “the minister added on Friday. Iran” is not just a threat to our physical security “but” a threat to our physical security “. concrete threat to our lifestyle and our shared values ”, continued Gantz,” in its hegemonic aspirations Iran seeks to destroy all traces of freedom, human dignity and peace in the Middle East and beyond, and the nuclear program is a tool for its hegemonic design. “To counter this design, cooperation between Israel and the Arab countries that have normalized relations with the Jewish state will play a key role. The recent joint exercise in the Red Sea of the USA, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain was mentioned by Austin as an indication of the way forward.
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