SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there should be no return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal abandoned by U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018.
“There must be no return to the previous nuclear agreement. We must stick to an uncompromising policy to ensure that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said in a speech in southern Israel on Sunday (November 22), Reuters reported.
Israeli media interpreted Netanyahu comments as a message to U.S. President-elect Joe Biden not to bring the United States back into the agreement.
Biden, who takes office on January 20, has said he would rejoin the accord if Iran first assumed strict compliance, and would work allies “to strengthen and extend it, while more effectively pushing back against Iran’s other destabilizing activities”.
The accord, which world powers reached with Iran, sought to limit Iran’s nuclear programme to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons in return for the easing of economic sanctions.
The agreement did not restrict Iran’s ballistic missile programme nor its support for militia in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, which the United States sees as destabilizing to the Middle East.
European powers party to the agreement, along with Russia and China, have been trying to hold the deal together despite U.S. pressure for sweeping sanctions against Iran over breaches it declared in response to Washington’s pullout.
Iran denies that its atomic programme is aimed at developing weapons.
On Sunday, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the future relations between Iran and the United States would not be simple, according to AFP.
“The United States has committed repeated crimes against the Iranian people,” added Khatibzadeh, citing a long list.
“It is natural that [between two] members of the United Nations [like the US and Iran] there have always been, and there are, very carefully considered exchanges, in a known framework,” Khatibzadeh said, while noting that “does not mean that Iran is forgetting this list of crimes.”
