Israel urges tough stance at Vienna nuclear talks

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday urged world powers to take a hard line against Iran in negotiations aimed at reviving an international nuclear deal, as his top defense and intelligence officials headed to Washington to discuss the flailing talks.

Israel has been watching with concern as world powers sit down with Iran in Vienna in hopes of restoring the tattered 2015 deal. Iran last week took an aggressive approach as talks resumed, suggesting everything discussed in previous rounds of diplomacy could be renegotiated. Continued Iranian advances in its atomic program have further raised the stakes.

The original deal, spearheaded by then-President Barack Obama, gave Iran muchneeded relief from crippling economic sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear activities. But then-President Donald Trump, with strong encouragement from Israel, withdrew from the deal in 2018, causing it to unravel.

Last week’s talks in Vienna resumed after a more than five-month hiatus and were the first in which Iran’s new conservative government participated.

European and American negotiators expressed disappointment with Iran’s positions and questioned whether the talks would succeed.

Israel has long opposed the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, known as the JCPOA, saying it didn’t go far enough to halt the country’s nuclear program and doesn’t address what it sees as hostile Iranian military activity across the region.

Prominent voices in Israel are now indicating the U.S. withdrawal, especially without a contingency plan for Iran’s continuously developing nuclear plan, was a blunder. But Israel’s new government has maintained a similar position to that of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — rejecting a return to the original deal and calling for diplomacy to be accompanied by military pressure on Iran.

“I call on every country negotiating with Iran in Vienna to take a strong line and make it clear to Iran that they cannot enrich uranium and negotiate at the same time,” Bennett told his Cabinet on Sunday. “Iran must begin to pay a price for its violations.”