Posted on 09/15/21
| News Source: Times of Israel
Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that he is prepared to accept a scenario in which the US manages to revive the Iran nuclear deal, in a rare comment from a senior government official not rejecting the multilateral accord offhand.
“The current US approach of putting the Iran nuclear program back in a box, I’d accept that,” Gantz told Foreign Policy in an interview published Tuesday, employing rhetoric used by the Biden administration to describe the goal of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
While security officials not in government have indicated a degree of tolerance for the JCPOA in the past, that sentiment has not extended to public officials, and Gantz appeared to be the most senior cabinet member to reflect it on the record.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett assured US President Joe Biden at the White House last month that he will not publicly campaign against Washington’s efforts to coax Iran back to the 2015 accord brokered by former president Barak Obama and deserted by his predecessor Donald Trump in 2018, Israeli officials said. This was a departure from Bennett’s predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu who campaigned aggressively against the JCPOA and even accepted an invitation to address a joint session of Congress where he unsuccessfully lobbied lawmakers against the deal.