US President Joe Biden on Wednesday told Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid that Washington would never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, the White House said, as Tehran seeks stronger guarantees from the US for the revival of a nuclear deal with world powers.
Israel opposes a return to the 2015 deal, which imposed curbs on Iran’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for the lifting of US, EU and UN sanctions on Tehran.
To Israel’s delight, former US president Donald Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018 and reimposed harsh sanctions, prompting Tehran to breach the pact’s nuclear limits.
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Biden has vowed to revive the agreement while ensuring the security of Israel, Iran’s regional archfoe.
“The President underscored U.S. commitment to never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon” in a call in which Biden and Lapid also discussed “threats posed by Iran,” the White House said in a statement.
Biden also emphasized the importance of concluding maritime boundary negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, the statement added.
In its own readout of the call, Lapid’s office said they “spoke at length about the negotiations on a nuclear agreement, and their shared commitment to stopping Iran’s progress towards a nuclear weapon.”
The nuclear deal appeared near revival in March, but indirect talks between Tehran and Washington broke down over several issues, including Tehran’s insistence that the International Atomic Energy Agency close its probes into uranium traces found at three undeclared sites before the nuclear pact is revived.
Biden and Lapid in July signed a joint pledge to deny Iran nuclear arms, a show of unity between allies long divided over diplomacy with Tehran.
However, Lapid last week said that if the 2015 deal is revived, Israel would not be bound by it.
The call came a day before Biden was to head to Philadelphia, the cradle of US statehood, to deliver a rare prime time speech on what he calls “the battle for the soul of the nation.”
His speech, set for 8pm, is to take place near the building where the Declaration of Independence and the US constitution were adopted more than two centuries ago.
Pennsylvania, the eastern US state that includes Philadelphia, might also prove key to the crucial midterms elections in November. The president was to visit the state three times this week alone.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre signaled that the 79-year-old leader would mince no words in his speech attacking his opponents.
“The president thinks that there is an extremist threat to our democracy,” she told reporters.
The threat has a name: “MAGA” or “ultra-MAGA” Republicans who embrace Trump’s “make America great again” ideology, she said.
“They just don’t respect the rule of law,” Jean-Pierre said before she called out several Republican officials and lawmakers by name for urging violence against public figures, a move that is highly unusual for a White House news briefing.
“The president believes, which is a reason to have this in prime time, that there are ... a majority of Americans who believe that we need to ... save the core values of our country,” Jean-Pierre said.
The speech comes as Trump faces an FBI investigation into top-secret government information discovered at his Mar-a-Lago residence that is zeroing in on the question of whether his team criminally obstructed the probe.
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