“Israel is prepared to act alone against Iran if needed, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid warned hours before the eighth round of talks to revive the 2015 Iran deal began in Vienna on Monday evening.” And it should be prepared.
Israel cannot afford to go along to get along. The Charter of every major Palestinian group documents its intent to obliterate Israel. Iran is funding this ongoing ambition as it moves closer and closer to developing a nuclear bomb. Given ominous recent trends, the threat is escalating against Israel rapidly. Without the US as a dependable ally, Israel must rely on itself. No other country in the world seeks the permission of any other country to defend its own sovereignty and existence. Policies of appeasement have encouraged Iran and the jihadist threat all around.
“Lapid warns that Israel will act alone against Iran if needed,” by Tovah Lazaroff, Jerusalem Post, December 27, 2021:
Israel is prepared to act alone against Iran if needed, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid warned hours before the eighth round of talks to revive the 2015 Iran deal began in Vienna on Monday evening.
“Of course, we prefer to act in international cooperation, but if necessary, we will act alone,” Lapid told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “We will defend ourselves by ourselves,” he emphasized.
“We have presented our allies with quite a bit of firm intelligence” about Iran’s nuclear program, Lapid said. This was not just “opinions and positions, but concrete intelligence that proves Iran is deceiving the world in a completely systematic way,” Lapid said.
“All they [Iran] care about is that sanctions are lifted and billions of dollars are poured into its nuclear program” and that funds are funneled to “Hezbollah, Syria, Iraq [and] the terrorist network they have deployed around the world,” Lapid said.
Iran immediately accused Israel of sabotaging the talks.
“The Zionist occupiers have never hidden their complete opposition to any regional or international arrangements that would lead to the resolution of issues in the region,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said.
“The [Zionist] regime is rooted in insecurity and terror,” he said. “The life of this regime lies in terror, insecurity and discord.”
Israel opposed the original Iran deal, known a the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that was signed between Iran and the six world powers: the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and the United Kingdom.Former US president Donald Trump exited the deal in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran. Tehran in turn has halted its compliance with the deal and has inched toward the production of weapons-grade uranium.
US President Joe Biden has sought to revive the deal, with the European Union brokering a process by which seven rounds of indirect talks have been held.
Israel has opposed the revival of the deal and has warned the signatories to the agreement of the dangers of both protracted negotiations, the resumption of the JCPOA or the arrival at a new deal that would fail to halt a nuclear Iran.
“Today, nuclear talks in Vienna resume,” Lapid said. “Israel’s main foreign policy and challenge are to prevent the Iranian nuclear program,” he emphasized to the FADC. “In recent months, we have had an intensive dialogue with all the countries involved in these negotiations.”
Last week, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was in Israel to discuss the talks and met separately with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Lapid.The foreign minister referenced his talks with the US but said he had also been to Moscow, Paris and London to discuss the matter.
“We have told everyone clearly: Israel will not let Iran become a nuclear threshold state,” Lapid said.Israel, he said, supports diplomacy as a preferred option in dealing with Iran.
“Israel does not oppose any agreement. A good agreement is good. We oppose any agreement that does not allow for real oversight neither of the Iranian nuclear program, nor of the Iranian money, nor of the Iranian terrorist network,” he clarified……
