“We will not tire, we will be relentless, when we are
talking about the very existence of the Jewish state, we will do what we need
to do,” Bennett said in a virtual address to a United States-based virtual conference
by the group ‘United against a Nuclear Iran’.
“Iran poses a strategic threat to the world and an
existential threat to Israel, and they ought not to be allowed to get away with
it.
“If Iran goes nuclear, you will get Turkey, Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, the whole Middle East will go nuclear. We have to keep up our pressure
on Iran, and we have to stay united in our efforts to do so,” Bennett said.
Former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, who served under
the Trump administration, said she believed the Iran deal, also known as the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was outdated.
She accused Biden administration of abandoning US Middle
East allies on Iran and in specific of sending Saudi Arabia into the arms of
Tehran.
"We should never go and give concessions to Iran and
play on their terms," but there should be a conversation with the Arab
countries and Israel, Haley said.
"Israel now is contemplating how to deal with Iran
without us, that is an unbelievable scenario, and they are not wrong to do
that. If I was advising Israel I would say do not count on the Biden
administration to help you with Iran, because they are not going to be
there," she said.
Republicans and Democrats alike want to stop a nuclear Iran,
but the Biden administration lacks bi-partisan support for the revival of the
2015 deal, said Haley. Like Israel, she does not believe the 2015 deal would
stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who is under personal US
sanctions over allegations of human rights abuses in his past as a judge, said
on Thursday that Iran seeks the “lifting of all US sanctions and neutralization
of sanctions,” as he issued an uncompromising tone ahead of the Vienna
discussions.
“The negotiations we are considering are result-oriented
ones. We will not leave the negotiating table... but we will not retreat from
the interests of our nation in any way,” Iranian state TV quoted Raisi as
saying.
Under the 2015 deal between Iran and six world powers,
Tehran curbed its uranium enrichment program, a possible pathway to nuclear
arms, in return for the lifting of US, UN and European Union sanctions.
But former US president Donald Trump quit the deal in 2018
and reimposed harsh sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors that have
crippled its economy, prompting Tehran to breach limits set by the pact on its
nuclear work.
In spite of six rounds of indirect talks, Tehran and
Washington still disagree on which steps need to be taken and when with key
issues being what nuclear limits Tehran will accept and what sanctions
Washington will remove.
Separately, the chief commander of Iran’s elite Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, said US pressure on Iran had failed.
“The Americans have used all means, policies and strategies
to surrender the Iranian nation... but the Islamic Republic has become
stronger,” Salami said in a televised speech to mark the siege of the US
embassy in Tehran after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
