Netanyahu’s message to Biden: Don’t rejoin Iran deal

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a clear message to US President-elect Joe Biden on Sunday that he would push back against American efforts to rejoin the Iran deal.

“Do not return to the previous [Iran] nuclear deal,” Netanyahu said at a memorial service for first prime minister David Ben-Gurion. “We must keep to an uncompromising policy to ensure that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons.”

Netanyahu also credited Israel’s “determined stance against Iran’s nuclearization and… our opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran” with Arab countries changing their position on Israel.

Biden, who will take office on January 20, has said he would rejoin the deal if Iran first resumed strict compliance and would work with allies “to strengthen and extend it, while more effectively pushing back against Iran’s other destabilizing activities.”

The president-elect and his aides have not specified what they would do to strengthen the agreement or curb Tehran’s other malign behavior in the region, such as sponsorship of terrorist groups like Hezbollah.

Israel strongly opposed the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between world powers and Iran, and Netanyahu spoke out against it before both houses of Congress, angering then-US president Barack Obama’s administration, including then-national security advisor Susan Rice, who is thought to be a leading candidate for secretary of state in Biden’s administration.

However, Sen. Chris Coons, another candidate for secretary of state, said on Friday he would not support returning to the Iran nuclear deal “without some clear path towards addressing the missile program and support for proxies.”

The JCPOA, which US President Donald Trump abandoned in May 2018 in favor of a “maximum pressure” sanctions regime, limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for easing economic sanctions. However, the deal’s “sunset clauses” will ease restrictions on the nuclear program in the coming years.

It also did not restrict Iran’s ballistic missile program nor Iranian support for proxy militias across the Middle East.

Stressing that he was speaking for himself, Coons said Washington would “need a path forward for limits on their missile program and their support for proxies before I would support reentering the JCPOA. These need to happen at the same time.”

Returning to the deal would be complicated, and sketching out a way to another agreement, on restraining Iran’s missile and regional activities would likely be even harder. Iran has already demanded compensation for the damage caused by Trump-era sanctions in order to return to talks with the US.