Two Israeli women were killed and dozens injured, including two seriously, when Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip fired massive barrages of rockets at southern Israel throughout Tuesday, drawing deadly retaliatory airstrikes from the Israel Defense Forces.

The deaths marked the first Israeli fatalities in the round of fighting with Gaza terrorist groups that began Monday evening, which has seen hundreds of rockets fired at Israeli territory.

The Hamas terror group claimed that at one stage on Tuesday it fired 137 rockets in around five minutes in an apparent attempt to overwhelm the Iron Dome missile defense system.

In a subsequent barrage on the southern coastal city of Ashkelon, less than an hour later, two women were killed by rockets in apparently separate hits. There were no immediate details on their identities.

Channel 12 reported that the deadly rocket attack directly struck a home where an elderly woman and her caregiver, who did not manage to get to a public shelter in time, lived. One of the women was killed, the network said, without identifying the victim.

Residents of the Ashkelon apartment bloc in which two women were killed by rocket fire from Gaza on May 11, 2021, speak to reporters outside the building (Channel 12 screenshot)

The network reported that the shelter is at least a minute’s run away from the woman’s home. The home did not have a safe room of its own.

The Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon said that it treated 74 casualties, including two seriously wounded and two in moderate condition. Forty-nine people received treatment for light injuries, with the remainder suffering from anxiety.

With a number of buildings in the city suffering direct hits over the course of the day, and concerns over the number of residential buildings without bomb shelters, the Israel Defense Forces instructed residents to remain in reinforced areas. The restriction was later lifted — followed, minutes later, by additional rocket alert sirens on the city.

Ashkelon Mayor Tomer Glam said some 25 percent of residents don’t have access to a protected area when rockets are fired at the city.

“It is impossible when normal life becomes a state of emergency within minutes,” he told Army Radio. “There are houses from the 1960s where there is no basic protection — it is time for treasury officials and decision-makers to understand what is happening here in the city.”

A picture shows a burnt vehicle in Ashkelon as rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip on May 11, 2021 (JACK GUEZ / AFP)

Hundreds of rockets were fired at Israel from Monday evening through Tuesday afternoon, many of which were intercepted by Iron Dome missile defense batteries while others fell short of their targets and landed inside the Strip.

Tuesday afternoon saw the rocket attacks shift slightly northward, with projectiles fired at Ashdod including a rocket that directly hit a residential building. Buildings were also hit in Ashkelon, including an empty school.

Israeli security forces at an Ashdod home hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip on May 11, 2021 (Flash90)

On Monday night, a rocket directly struck a house in the Sha’ar Hanegev region, damaging it but not injuring its occupants.

In the early hours of Tuesday, a missile hit a residential building in Ashkelon, wounding six Israelis, four of them members of the same family: parents in their 40s, an 8-year-old and an 11-year-old. The father was seriously hurt with a head wound, and the others  sustained light injuries from shrapnel.

The assaults continued Tuesday after a night of almost constant rocket fire on Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip and as the IDF conducted strikes on more than 100 targets in the coastal enclave, as part of what it has called “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” the military said. The previous day saw a major outbreak of violence from Gaza, including rare rocket fire on Jerusalem, where Palestinians have been clashing with police for days.

The scene after a rocket hit Ashkelon, May 11, 2021 (Israel Police)

In response to the ongoing rocket rockets, IDF fighter jets, aircraft and tanks struck some 130 targets in the Gaza Strip, most of them associated with Hamas, but also some linked to other terror groups in the enclave, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups reported that several high-ranking commanders were killed in Israeli raids, including three top PIJ leaders in a drone strike on a building in the upscale Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City.

One of those killed was the brother of another top PIJ commander, Baha Abu al-Ata, who was killed in an Israeli strike in November 2019, kicking off a major round of fighting in the Strip. Islamic Jihad vowed revenge for the death of the three commanders in its armed wing, saying the response will be “harsh.”

The devastated Ashkelon apartment in which a woman was killed by rocket fire from Gaza, May 11, 2021 (Channel 12 screenshot)

Additionally, the IDF said it killed the head of Islamic Jihad’s special rocket unit, in an operation carried out in cooperation with the Shin Bet. Sameh Abed al-Mamluk was killed along with several other senior rocket officials, the army said.

According to the IDF, the military’s targets also included the home of a top Hamas commander, Hamas’s intelligence headquarters in southern Gaza, two attack tunnels that approached the border with Israel, rocket production and storage sites, observation posts, military installations and launchpads.

The IDF said it was also targeting terrorist operatives as they fired rockets or attempted to launch anti-tank missiles at Israel. On Monday, an Israeli man was lightly injured when Palestinian terrorists fired an anti-tank guided missile at his car.

A Palestinian man inspects the rubble of a partially destroyed residential building after it was said to have been hit by Israeli retaliatory strikes on the al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, May. 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Palestinian media also reported strikes around the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis and on an apartment building in the al-Shati camp near Gaza city. A building was also destroyed in Gaza City’s upscale Tel al-Hawa neighborhood.

The Hamas Health Ministry said 28 Gazans were killed, including nine minors, and 125 wounded in the ongoing escalation with Israel. Fifteen Gazans sustained serious injuries, according to Hamas Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra. Israel said more than half were Hamas fighters.

IDF Spokesperson Hidai Zilberman said a number of those killed in Gaza, including at least three children, were hit by errant rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists, not by Israeli airstrikes.

The mother of Palestinian Hussien Hamad, 11, is comforted by mourners during his funeral in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip on May 11, 2021 (MAHMUD HAMS / AFP)

The IDF spokesperson said Israel was taking steps to avoid Palestinian civilian casualties, but that they were liable to occur anyway as Hamas deliberately operates within a densely populated area, using the residents of the Strip as human shields.

Israel on Tuesday showed no indications that it was interested in an immediate ceasefire, as Zilberman said the fighting was expected to last at least several days.

IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi on Tuesday afternoon gave the military a green light to keep targeting Hamas and PIJ members operating in the Strip and bombing sites connected to the terror groups’ rocket production and storage efforts.

Soldiers from the IDF’s Golani Infantry Brigade and 7th Armored Brigade were sent to the Gaza border as reinforcements and additional troops were called in to aerial defense, intelligence and air force units, the military said. The police said that eight reserve companies of Border Police would be called up to help deal with disturbances across the country.

Zilberman said the military was deploying additional air defenses throughout the country, notably in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Tel Aviv had yet to be targeted as of Tuesday afternoon, but the IDF suspected that rocket fire may be directed there as well.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz said the IDF would continue striking Hamas and other terrorists in the Strip until “long-term and complete quiet” is restored. Gantz also threatened Hamas’s leadership, saying its commanders would “be held responsible and pay the price for the aggression.”

In light of the ongoing rocket attacks, Gantz declared the area within 80 kilometers (50 miles) of the Gaza Strip to be under military control, giving the IDF the power to issue directives to civilians there. The IDF ordered schools closed in communities near Gaza on Tuesday and limited gatherings to groups of 10 people outdoors and 50 people indoors. Businesses would be allowed to open only if they had easy access to bomb shelters.

An overhead view of an Ashkelon home badly damaged by a rocket fired from Gaza on May 11, 2021. A man was seriously hurt in the attack. (JACK GUEZ / AFP)

The military also limited gatherings in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and the Shfela region around Beit Shemesh to 30 people outdoors and 50 people indoors. Schools and businesses there could also only be opened if they had easy access to a bomb shelter. A number of cities in central Israel announced they were preemptively canceling schools on Tuesday as a precautionary measure.

Meanwhile, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said that the Strip’s sole power plant was running low on diesel fuel after Israel closed all of its crossings on Monday evening in response to the hundreds of rockets fired.

The coastal enclave normally receives most of its fuel through the Kerem Shalom commercial crossing with Israel, and according to the Gaza Electrical Company, one of the plant’s generators has already been turned off and the plant as a whole will likely shut down “soon” due to lack of fuel, threatening to severely restrict the number of hours of electricity Gazans receive.

Al-Qidra said that an electrical shortage would threaten the effectiveness of Gaza’s health care system.

“This will have a serious effect on public health and the health of our society,” al-Qidra said.

Hamas, which is officially dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel, took effective control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 from the Palestinian Authority in a violent coup. Since then, Israel has imposed a naval blockade on the enclave, as well as stiff control over what can enter the Strip, maintaining that it is necessary in order to prevent terror groups from smuggling weapons into the area.

The military initially believed that Hamas was not interested in a large-scale conflict with Israel at this time, but that assessment changed over the past two days and the IDF began preparing accordingly.

Fire billows from Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, on May 10, 2021. (MAHMUD HAMS / AFP)

Palestinian terror groups have tied the attacks to the unrest in Jerusalem connected to both prayer on the Temple Mount during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the pending eviction of a number of Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

Israel has fought three large operations against Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip since 2008, most recently in 2014 with a 51-day war known as Operation Protective Edge.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip fired a massive barrages of rockets at southern Israel throughout Tuesday, wounding at least 24 people and drawing deadly retaliatory airstrikes from the Israel Defense Forces.

The assaults continued a night of almost constant rocket fire on Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip and as the IDF conducted strikes on more than 100 targets in the coastal enclave, as part of what it has called “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” the military said. The previous day saw a major outbreak of violence from Gaza, including rare rocket fire on Jerusalem, where Palestinians have been clashing with police for days.

According to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, at least 23 people in the Strip were killed on Monday night and Tuesday, including nine minors. Another 107 Palestinians were injured to varying degrees, the ministry said. The IDF said at least 15 of those killed were members of the Hamas terror group who were launching rockets or anti-tank guided missiles at Israel.

IDF Spokesperson Hidai Zilberman said a number of those killed in Gaza, including at least three children, were hit by errant rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists, not by Israeli airstrikes.

The mother of Palestinian Hussien Hamad, 11, is comforted by mourners during his funeral in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip on May 11, 2021 (MAHMUD HAMS / AFP)

Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups reported that several high-ranking commanders were killed in Israeli raids on Tuesday, including two top PIJ leaders in a drone strike on a building in the upscale Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, one of whom was the brother of another top PIJ commander, Baha Abu al-Ata, who was killed in an Israeli strike in November 2019, kicking off a major round of fighting in the Strip.

IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi on Tuesday afternoon gave the military a green light to keep targeting Hamas and PIJ members operating in the Strip and bombing sites connected to the terror groups’ rocket production and storage efforts.

The IDF spokesperson said Israel was taking steps to avoid Palestinian civilian casualties, but that they were liable to occur anyway as Hamas deliberately operates within a densely populated area, using the residents of the Strip as human shields.

Israel on Tuesday showed no indications that it was interested in an immediate ceasefire, as Zilberman said the fighting was expected to last at least several days and that the coming hours would be particularly punishing for Hamas.

“We have an intense day ahead of us,” Zilberman told reporters on Tuesday morning, adding, “We have a goal and we will not stop until we’ve reached it.”

Soldiers from the IDF’s Golani Infantry Brigade and 7th Armored Brigade were sent to the Gaza border as reinforcements and additional troops were called in to aerial defense, intelligence and air force units, the military said.

“The chief of staff said the IDF will continue to act determinedly in order to return security to residents of the south, and all headquarters should prepare for a wider conflict, which has no time limit,” the IDF said.

Smoke billows from a building targeted by in an Israeli strike on Gaza City amid rocket fire from the Strip on May 11, 2021 (MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)

Asked about the potential for a ground invasion or targeted killing of top terrorist commanders, Zilberman said the military “was prepared for anything.”

According to the IDF, over 200 rockets and mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip toward Israel from 6 p.m. Monday to 6 a.m. Tuesday, dozens of which were intercepted by Iron Dome missile defense batteries. The military said the Iron Dome had a successful interception rate of over 90 percent of projectiles heading toward populated areas.

According to Zilberman, roughly a third of the projectiles fired from Gaza landed inside the Strip.

Most of the others landed in open fields, where they caused no injuries, but a small number landed inside Israeli communities, causing damage to nearby buildings and infrastructure. One rocket directly struck a house in the Sha’ar Hanegev region on Monday night, damaging it but not injuring its occupants, and two hit apartment buildings in Ashkelon on Tuesday morning, injuring those inside.

Video footage of the Tuesday morning attack showed dozens of rockets being fired at Ashkelon, with Iron Dome interceptor missiles screaming up into the gray morning sky to try and bring them down.

Six Israelis were wounded in that attack, four of them members of the same family: parents in their 40s, an 8-year-old and an 11-year old. The father was seriously hurt with a head wound, and the rest sustained light injuries from shrapnel. A 63-year-old man was also moderately injured by shrapnel, and a man and a woman in their 80s were lightly injured, medics said. On Monday, an Israeli man was lightly injured when Palestinian terrorists fired an anti-tank guided missile at his car.

In total, Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center and Beersheba’s Soroka Medical Center said they was treating 24 people who were wounded on Monday night and Tuesday morning, 22 of them with light injuries. In addition to those hit by rocket fire, a number of those were hospitalized for injuries sustained while running to bomb shelters, and eight people suffered acute anxiety attacks brought on by rocket sirens, medics said.

In response to the ongoing rocket rockets, IDF fighter jets, aircraft and tanks struck some 130 targets in the Gaza Strip, most of them associated with Hamas, but also some linked to other terror groups in the enclave, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

According to the IDF, they included the home of a top Hamas commander, Hamas’s intelligence headquarters in southern Gaza, two attack tunnels that approached the border with Israel, rocket production and storage sites, observation posts, military installations and launchpads. The IDF said it was also targeting terrorist operatives as they fired rockets at Israel. The military released footage of some of its strikes, including the attack on the Hamas officer’s apartment building (below).

Hamas in Gaza said it had launched the morning attack on Ashkelon in response to the IDF strike on the commander’s apartment building. The terror group said it would “turn Ashkelon into hell” if Israel targeted civilians in Gaza.

Palestinian media also reported strikes around the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis and on an apartment building in the al-Shati camp near Gaza city. A building was also destroyed in Gaza City’s upscale Tel al-Hawa neighborhood.

Zilberman said the military was deploying additional air defenses throughout the country, notably in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Tel Aviv had yet to be targeted as of Tuesday morning, but the IDF suspected that rocket fire may soon be directed there as well.

Earlier, the Hamas military wing issued an ultimatum that it would carry out a massive attack by 2 a.m. if Israel did not vacate its forces from the Temple Mount. It later claimed that it had suspended plans for the attack after police withdrew from the holy site.

There was no confirmation from Israel that police had left the compound.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz said the IDF would continue striking Hamas and other terrorists in the Strip until “long-term and complete quiet” is restored.

Fire billows from Israeli air strikes in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on May 11, 2021.(Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP)

Gantz also threatened Hamas’s leadership, saying its commanders would “be held responsible and pay the price for the aggression.”

The waves of rocket fire began at 6 p.m., the time Hamas had earlier threatened it would attack Israel if it did not remove its security forces from the Temple Mount and the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, following weeks of unrest in the capital. Monday saw widespread clashes between Palestinians and Israel Police officers on the Temple Mount, as well as multiple attacks by Palestinian rioters against Israeli civilians. Hundreds of Palestinians were reportedly injured, along with dozens of police officers and a number of Israeli civilians.

In addition to the attack on the capital — the first time Jerusalem was targeted by rocket fire since the 2014 Gaza war — Palestinian terror groups fired rockets and mortar shells at Israeli cities and towns near the Gaza border, mostly at Ashkelon and Sderot, as well as smaller communities in the Sha’ar Hanegev region of southern Israel.

An anti-tank guided missile was also fired at an Israeli civilian’s car that was traveling on a hill south of Sderot, lightly injuring him, the military said. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad took responsibility for the attack and later released footage of the strike.

In the video, the Israeli man can be seen approaching the jeep from a hill overlooking the Gaza Strip. As he gets close, the anti-tank missile is fired at the car, causing a large blast. The man was reportedly blown back from the vehicle by the blast and sustained shrapnel wounds to the face and extremities.

The Israeli Air Force began conducting retaliatory airstrikes on Hamas-controlled targets in the Strip around 6:30 p.m. in response to the attacks from the enclave, including at rocket-launching teams.

The military said its fighter jets bombed a Hamas attack tunnel in the northern Gaza Strip. A number of Hamas members were believed to be inside the tunnel at the time and were killed in the strike. It was not immediately clear if the tunnel crossed into Israeli territory.

In light of the ongoing rocket attacks, Gantz declared the area within 80 kilometers (50 miles) of the Gaza Strip to be under military control, giving the IDF the power to issue directives to civilians there. The IDF ordered schools closed in communities near Gaza on Tuesday and limited gatherings to groups of 10 people outdoors and 50 people indoors. Businesses would be allowed to open only if they had easy access to bomb shelters.

The military also limited gatherings in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and the Shfela region around Beit Shemesh to 30 people outdoors and 50 people indoors. Schools and businesses there could also only be opened if they had easy access to a bomb shelter. A number of cities in central Israel announced they were preemptively canceling schools on Tuesday as a precautionary measure.

Damage caused to a house outside of Jerusalem that was struck by debris after a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed nearby on May 10, 2021. (Courtesy)

Hamas claimed responsibility for firing the seven rockets at Jerusalem, one of which was intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system, according to the IDF. One rocket landed near a home in a community outside Jerusalem, causing light damage, but no injuries. Some of the others sparked fires in the forests surrounding the capital, which were quickly extinguished.

The attack triggered sirens in the capital, as well as in Beit Shemesh and surrounding towns. The Knesset plenum was evacuated, as was the Western Wall complex, where thousands of Israelis had gathered to celebrate Jerusalem Day, which marks the reunification of the city after the IDF captured its eastern neighborhoods and the Old City in the 1967 Six Day War.

Zilberman, the military spokesman, said a number of terror groups conducted the rocket launches, but all with the approval and at the direction of Hamas, the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip.

Over the past day, the IDF has significantly boosted its presence along the Gaza border both in terms of ground troops and air defense systems, Zilberman said.

The military initially believed that Hamas was not interested in a large-scale conflict with Israel at this time, but that assessment changed over the past two days and the IDF began preparing accordingly.

Recent days have seen a number of rocket and mortar shell attacks from the Gaza Strip, as well as a major return of balloon-borne incendiary and explosive devices being launched from Gaza, which have burned large swaths of southern Israel.

Palestinian terror groups have tied the attacks to the unrest in Jerusalem connected to both prayer on the Temple Mount during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and the pending eviction of a number of Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

Israel has fought three large operations against Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip since 2008, most recently in 2014 with a 51-day war known as Operation Protective Edge.

Hamas, which is officially dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel, took effective control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 from the Palestinian Authority in a violent coup. Since then, Israel has imposed a naval blockade on the enclave, as well as stiff control over what can enter the Strip, maintaining that it is necessary in order to prevent terror groups from smuggling weapons into the area.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

After US President Joe Biden made only brief mention of Iran’s nuclear program during his first speech to Congress, Israel’s Ambassador to the US Gilad Erdan said Thursday that Jerusalem will not allow its security to be dependent on or bound by an international agreement that it is not a party to.

Erdan’s comments came hours before he was slated to attend a meeting with Mossad spy agency chief Yossi Cohen and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that was expected to touch on the efforts to breathe new life into the limping 2015 Iran deal.

He said that although the Biden administration is seeking to reenter the deal and bring Iran back to compliance, the US accepts Israel’s right to defend itself, a value that Israeli officials drove home during talks in Washington this week.

Israeli defense officials told their US counterparts that “the freedom of action of Israel to prevent Iran from becoming an existential threat is a freedom of action that will be preserved,” he said.

It is a demand that “the current government respects,” Erdan added and noted that Israel’s self-defense needs, including against other regional threats, has been backed in recent White House statements.

He said Israel is committed to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons “in any way possible and I think the international committee led by the US understands that.”

Erdan said that during the Washington talks, where Israeli and US officials discussed ongoing negotiations in Vienna among the parties to the Iran deal, it was agreed that there would be clear communication between the sides.

Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan speaks at the UN in New York. (Shahar Azran/Israeli Mission to the UN)

“We agreed on the principle of transparency and not to surprise each other and I think we are both keeping to it,” he said.

Erdan conceded that Israel and the US have different opinions on the Iran deal — Israel has staunchly opposed the pact from the start — but said that is the only difference on security matters between Jerusalem and Washington.

“Beyond that, all the cooperation activities are continuing as usual,” he said.

Commenting on Biden’s speech to Congress, which made only a brief mention of Iran’s nuclear program and none of Israel by name, Erdan said the US president has made it clear that he will prioritize dealing with the coronavirus outbreak and economic recovery ahead of international issues, which are anyway dominated by economic concerns related to China.

“I think we can all be very, very encouraged that his commitment to preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons was mentioned in his speech,” Erdan said. “There is a lot to be optimistic about.”

During his speech, Biden said: “On Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs that present a serious threat to America’s security and the security of the world – we are going to be working closely with our allies to address the threats posed by both of these countries through diplomacy as well as stern deterrence.”

Israeli and American national security advisers met in Washington on Tuesday to discuss concerns over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and US efforts to reenter the deal between Tehran and world powers.

Israeli officials, including Ambassador Gilad Erdan (R), National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat (2R) meet with US officials Brett McGurk (L), US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan (2L) and Barbara Leaf (3L) at the Israeli embassy in Washington DC on April 27, 2021 (Embassy of Israel)

The meeting between National Security Council chairman Meir Ben-Shabbat and his counterpart, Jake Sullivan, marked the first in-person meeting in the United States of high-level officials from the two countries since Biden entered the White House. Erdan was also at the meeting.

“The United States and Israel agreed on the significant threat posed by Iran’s aggressive behavior in the region, and US officials underscored President Biden’s unwavering support for Israel’s right to defend itself,” the White House said in a statement after the meeting.

Ben-Shabbat and Sullivan head the bilateral strategic group aimed at Israeli-US cooperation in the effort to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The group has convened virtually twice in recent months.

Ahead of their departure to Washington, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed the defense officials participating in the mission to voice objection to the US return to the Iran nuclear deal, but not to hold talks on the issues.

Netanyahu emphasized in a meeting with the delegation last week that Israel is not a party to the nuclear agreement with Iran, and not committed to it.

“Israel is committed to its own security interests only and will act accordingly,” an unnamed Israeli official reportedly said.

Meanwhile, indirect talks are taking place in Vienna between Iran, the US and other major powers aimed at reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which has been on life support since Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018. Trump’s administration subsequently issued a host of sanctions against Iran as part of its “maximum pressure” strategy aimed at coaxing Tehran into a stricter agreement to curb its nuclear weapons program.

Biden has sought to reenter the US into the JCPOA, but has refused to do so until Iran returns to compliance with the agreement. Following Trump’s withdrawal, Iran engaged in a rush to enrich uranium, recently ramping up levels to an unprecedented 60 percent, in a policy that has been vehemently opposed by the international community.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met Thursday in Washington with visiting Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and Israel’s ambassador Gilad Erdan, as Israel sought to convince Washington to seek an improved deal to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons rather than reenter the limping 2015 accord.

The two-hour meeting was the second this week in Washington involving senior officials from the two countries and underscored Israel’s unease with ongoing indirect nuclear negotiations between Iran and the United States in Vienna, the officials said. Although other issues were discussed, Israel used Thursday’s meeting to “express strong concerns” about Iran, one of the officials said.

Blinken attended Thursday’s meeting along with his newly confirmed deputy, Wendy Sherman, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and two other senior officials, Brett McGurk from the National Security Council and Derek Chollet from the State Department. Cohen and Erdan represented Israel.

The State Department declined to comment on the meeting or even to confirm that it had happened, but said the Biden administration is committed to coordination and transparency with Israel in its nuclear diplomacy with Iran.

Head of the Mossad Yossi Cohen speaks at a cyber conference at Tel Aviv University on June 24, 2019. (Flash90)

Earlier Thursday, Erdan said the US understood Israel retained “freedom of action” to act against Iranian activities that threatened the Jewish state.

“The freedom of action of Israel to prevent Iran from becoming an existential threat is a freedom of action that will be preserved,” Erdan said, adding that “the current government respects” that Israeli demand.

As the officials met in Washington, Israel’s intelligence minister, Eli Cohen, joined the chorus of Israeli officials sounding the alarm on Iran and insisting on Israel’s operational freedom.

Israeli warplanes, Cohen said, “can reach everywhere in the Middle East — and certainly Iran.”

He warned that “a bad deal will send the region spiraling into war. Anyone seeking short-term benefits should be mindful of the longer term. Israel will not allow Iran to attain nuclear arms. Iran has no immunity anywhere.”

Cohen also urged international pressure on Iran’s other activities, including its “destabilizing other countries.”

Mossad chief Cohen and National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat have been in Washington for the past few days for high-level meetings with American counterparts seeking to clarify Israel’s position and needs as the Biden administration works to rejoin the 2015 deal imposing limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of US and international sanctions.

State Department Spokesman Ned Price on Thursday would not confirm the Cohen-Blinken meeting, but said the two countries were coordinating closely on the Iran issue.

“We have, as you’ve heard from State Department officials, updated our Israeli counterparts before every round of negotiations, after every round of negotiations and we’ve been consulting with them during these negotiations as well,” Price said, according to The Hill.

“So, we have conducted ourselves with a great deal of transparency knowing that the United States and Israel share a common interest here, of course, and that is seeing to it that Iran is verifiably and permanently prevented from acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

A Tuesday meeting between Ben-Shabbat and his American counterpart Jake Sullivan also dealt with the “significant threat” of Iran’s behavior in the region, the White House said at the time.

Israeli officials, including Ambassador Gilad Erdan (R), National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat (2R) meet with US officials Brett McGurk (L), US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan (2L) and Barbara Leaf (3L) at the Israeli embassy in Washington DC on April 27, 2021 (Embassy of Israel)

Price also told reporters on Thursday that US Special Envoy on Iran Robert Malley joined in on the Ben-Shabbat-Sullivan meeting to brief the two officials on efforts in Vienna to bring the US and Iran back to the table.

The two national security advisers agreed at the meeting to establish an interagency working group dealing with the threat to Israel and other US allies in the region from Iranian drones and precision-guided missiles.

The Biden administration has said returning Iran to compliance with the nuclear deal was a priority after former president Donald Trump withdrew from the accord in 2017.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Senate confirmed Colin Kahl to be undersecretary of defense for policy, a Biden nomination that survived a fierce challenge from the pro-Israel right, which targeted Kahl for his role in shaping the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Kahl was confirmed 49-45 in Tuesday’s vote along party lines.

Republicans, spurred by the right-wing pro-Israel community, targeted Kahl principally for his role when he was national security adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden in shaping the Iran deal, which traded sanctions relief for a rollback of Iran’s nuclear program.

Biden, now president, wanted Kahl back in government as the administration seeks to reenter the agreement. Former president Donald Trump left the deal in 2018, agreeing with conservatives who said it did not do enough to contain Iran.

Since the US pullout, Iran has accelerated its nuclear program, and Biden thinks the deal’s framework is the best means of keeping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Then Vice President Joe Biden, center, flanked by Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson, left, and National Security Adviser to the Vice President Colin Kahl, at the Blair House in Washington, February 24, 2016. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

Christians United for Israel launched a six-figure ad buy in West Virginia targeting Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat who sometimes votes with Republicans.

It didn’t work, as Manchin said he was on board with Kahl. Three Israeli generals who worked with Kahl when he was with the Obama administration effectively endorsed him, as did a cadre of Democrats who are close to the pro-Israel community.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is considering a near wholesale rollback of some of the most stringent Trump-era sanctions imposed on Iran in a bid to get the Islamic Republic to return to compliance with a landmark 2015 nuclear accord, according to current and former US officials and others familiar with the matter.

As indirect talks continue this week in Vienna to explore the possibility of reviving the nuclear deal, American officials have become increasingly expansive about what they might be prepared to offer Iran, which has been driving a hard line on sanctions relief, demanding that all US penalties be removed, according to these people.

American officials have refused to discuss which sanctions are being considered for removal. But they have stressed that they are open to lifting non-nuclear sanctions, such as those tied to terrorism, missile development and human rights, in addition to those related to the nuclear program.

Biden administration officials say this is necessary because of what they describe as a deliberate attempt by the Trump administration to stymie any return to the deal. Under the 2015 agreement, the United States was required to lift sanctions tied to Iran’s nuclear program, but not the non-nuclear sanctions.

Abbas Araghchi, political deputy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran, is leaving the ‘Grand Hotel Wien’ after the closed-door nuclear talks in Vienna on April 16, 2021, where diplomats of the EU, China, Russia and Iran hold their talks. (JOE KLAMAR / AFP)

When former president Donald Trump re-imposed sanctions after withdrawing from the deal in 2018, he not only put the nuclear sanctions back in but also added layers of terrorism and other sanctions on many of the same entities. In addition, the Trump administration imposed an array of new sanctions on previously unsanctioned entities.

This has put the current administration in an awkward position: Iran is demanding the removal of all sanctions. If the US doesn’t lift at least some of them, Iran says it won’t agree to halt its nuclear activities barred by the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

But if the Biden administration makes concessions that go beyond the nuclear-specific sanctions, Republican critics and others, including Israel and Gulf Arab states, are likely to seize on them as proof that the administration is caving to Iran. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo has led the charge among Trump alumni to denounce any easing of sanctions.

Former Trump administration officials say all the sanctions are legitimate. Gabriel Noronha, a former State Department senior adviser on Iran, said all the Trump-era sanctions had been approved by career Justice Department lawyers and would have been rejected if they weren’t legitimate.

On the eve of renewed sanctions by Washington, Iranian protesters burn a dollar banknote and a US makeshift flag during a demonstration outside the former US embassy in the Iranian capital Tehran on November 4, 2018, marking the anniversary of its storming by student protesters that triggered a hostage crisis in 1979. (ATTA KENARE / AFP)

But a senior State Department official involved in the negotiations said officials now “have to go through every sanction to look at whether they were legitimately or not legitimately imposed.”

The official, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks, also said the US would be prepared to lift sanctions that would otherwise deny Iran the benefits it’s entitled to under the deal, not just those specifically related to nuclear activity. Those sanctions could include restrictions on Iran’s ability to access the international financial system, including dealing in dollar-based transactions.

“There are sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA and as we have said, if Iran resumes its compliance with the nuclear deal … we would be prepared to lift those sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said last week. He declined to elaborate on what might be “inconsistent” with the deal.

Despite the reticence of Price and the senior official, their comments suggested that sanctions imposed on Iran’s Central Bank, its national oil and shipping companies, its manufacturing, construction and financial sectors are on the block. Deal critics briefed on aspects of the Vienna negotiations say they suspect that is indeed the case.

This image taken from the Twitter account of President Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump, shows what looks like a movie-style poster that takes creative inspiration from the TV series ‘Game of Thrones’ to announce the re-imposition of sanctions against Iran. Trump tweeted a photo of himself with the words ‘Sanctions are Coming’ Nov. 5. The US sanctions on Iran had been lifted under a 2015 nuclear pact, but they are taking effect on Monday. (Donald J. Trump Twitter account via AP)

That’s because the bank, oil, shipping and other sanctions, all ostensibly imposed by the Trump administration for terrorism, ballistic missile and human rights concerns, also affect nuclear sanctions relief.

Current officials say no decisions have yet been made and nothing will be agreed in Vienna until everything regarding sanctions relief and Iran’s return to compliance with the nuclear deal has been settled.

But critics of the nuclear deal fear the administration will go beyond even what has been suggested by the administration’s oblique comments. They suspect that sanctions on people, companies, government agencies or other entities identified for nuclear sanctions relief in the 2015 deal will be cleared; even if they were subsequently penalized on other grounds.

“The administration is looking to allow tens of billions of dollars into the coffers of the regime even if it means lifting sanctions on major entities blacklisted for terrorism and missile proliferation,” said Mark Dubowitz, a prominent Iran deal critic and CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“They’re even looking to give the regime indirect access to the US dollar through the US financial system so that international companies can clear transactions with Iran through the US dollar,” said Dubowitz, who is frequently criticized for his hard-line stance on Iran but has also been asked for his views on sanctions by the administration.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani addresses the nation in a televised speech in Tehran, Iran, August 6, 2018. (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)

The State Department spokesman’s reply to such concerns only increased the worries of the critics.

“The JCPOA, that original agreement, spells out precisely what is allowed, precisely what is prohibited in order for a country to be in compliance with it. That remains the blueprint for all of this,” Price said.

The Obama administration grappled with much the same issue after the conclusion of the nuclear deal in 2015. It took the position that some sanctions previously imposed by it and former President George W. Bush’s administration for terrorism reasons should actually be classified as nuclear sanctions and therefore lifted under the deal.

Still, many countries and international companies were hesitant to jump into the Iranian market for fear that the sanctions relief was not clear-cut and that a future US president could re-impose the sanctions. Now, that that has happened, and even before an agreement has been concluded in Vienna, that concern has resurfaced.

Already, Republicans in Congress and opponents of the Iranian government are stepping up efforts to codify Trump’s hard-line stance on Iran with new legislation. Although a law to bar a return to the nuclear deal is unlikely to pass, there is wide bipartisan support for resolutions encouraging the administration to take a tougher line on Iran.

Such a resolution was introduced on Wednesday with more than 220 Democratic and Republican co-sponsors. In it, they call for the administration to recognize “the rights of the Iranian people and their struggle to establish a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear Republic of Iran while holding the ruling regime accountable for its destructive behavior.”