Israeli official: Gaps do exist between U.S., Israel over Iran nuclear program
Official says that while there is no disagreement that Iran is a threat to world peace, there is a gap over the non-satisfactory demands made by world powers in the Baghdad talks.
Israeli officials said Monday that there are gaps between Israel and the United States over negotiations with Iran, as opposed to previous announcements made by the U.S administration.
A senior Israeli official stated that while there is no disagreement that Iran is a threat to world peace and should be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon, there is a gap over the non-satisfactory demands made by world powers in the Baghdad talks, which do not answer Israel’s minimum requirements that it believes should be placed before the Iranians.
“The Iranians arrived at the Baghdad talks to gain time,” said the Israeli official. “We are saying this with prior knowledge, not only from estimations.”
“The Iranians have given nothing up to this point and have not yielded over a thing, but they have gained eight weeks to continue their nuclear program. We believed that Iran would be willing to make sacrifices over the issue of enrichment to the level of 20% in order to save its nuclear program, but even they are not even willing to do that.”
On Friday, an American negotiation team arrived in Israel following two days of intensive talks in Baghdad. In a briefing to journalists in Tel Aviv, a top U.S. official said that “There are no gaps between the U.S. and Israel in anything related to talks between Iran and the six world powers over the future of Iran’s nuclear program.”
The U.S. official, who is intimately acquainted with the P5 + 1 talks which took place in Baghdad last week, asked to remain anonymous owing to the sensitive nature of the issue.
According to the official, the U.S. government does not feel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to pressure it over negotiations with Iran.
“We are the ones who are pressuring ourselves because we see a nuclear Iran as a real danger to global security, and not because of Israel, ” the U.S. official said.
“Even if we do not have the patience, we need to give diplomacy a chance before military action…it is still not too late, and I think that Israel also doesn’t think it’s too late,” the official added.
On Friday, the head of the U.S. negotiation team, undersecretary of state for political affairs Wendy Sherman, arrived in Israel along with officials from the White House National Security Council working on the Iran nuclear issue – Gary Seymour and Puneet Talwar.
The American team had a three-hour meeting with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, with National Security advisor Yaakov Amidror, and a number of other senior Israeli officials who deal with the Iran issue, in order to update them on the talks in Baghdad.
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