On May 28, the New York Times reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been threatening to up-end the Iran-U.S. talks by striking Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, just as the Trump Administration has been attempting to negotiate a new agreement aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear program. Netanyahu, says the Times (with gross understatement), has always been skeptical of diplomacy with Iran and is vehemently opposed to Iran maintaining any enrichment capacity at all (the fact that Israel has an undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal is, as usual, never mentioned—ed.). Over the course of recent weeks’ meetings between U.S. and Israeli officials, Netanyahu has floated the threat of striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to the Times’ sources.
Netanyahu’s office denounced the Times story as “fake news.”
However, President Trump said on May 28, that he had spoken to Netanyahu last week, specifically advising him to not strike Iran. Speaking at an Oval Office press briefing, Trump replied to a reporter’s question about whether he had spoken to Netanyahu on this question. Trump said, commenting that he would tell the truth, “I told him this would be inappropriate to do right now, because we’re very close to a solution now,” Trump told reporters, “That could change at any moment.” Sources familiar with the discussions echoed Trump’s optimism and told CNN that they are closing in on a broad agreement that could be clinched when the U.S. and Iran meet next, most likely in the Middle East.
The sticking point in the U.S.-Iran talks remains the U.S.-Israeli demand that Iran give up its nuclear enrichment capability in its entirety, a demand that Tehran has already rejected. “The continuation of enrichment in Iran as an inseparable part of the country’s nuclear industry is a fundamental principle for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Any proposal or initiative that may contradict this principle or pave the way for the violation of this right will not be accepted,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told reporters yesterday.
CNN adds: “The stakes are enormously high—an Israeli strike could undo the progress the U.S. has made, risk triggering a wider regional conflict and ruin Trump’s chances of achieving a major foreign policy breakthrough as progress on brokering ceasefires in the wars in Ukraine and Gaza has stalled.”
The reality is that Israel is a hand grenade in the service of British geopolitical policy that could blow up more than just Southwest Asia and Trump’s hope of being a “peace president.”
