Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has raised anew warnings that Israel will act, with military force if necessary, to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
"If the Iranians don't believe the world is serious about stopping them, they will race to the bomb. Israel reserves the right to act at any given moment in any given way," Lapid said at a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington.
“If a terror regime is going to acquire a nuclear weapon we must act.”
Lapid met on Tuesday in Washington with Vice President Kamala Harris as well as President Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan to convey Israel's concerns about the US rejoining the nuclear deal and restoring sanctions relief.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has so far refused to resume indirect talks with the United States in Vienna on both sides returning to compliance with the deal, under which Iran curbed its nuclear program in return for economic sanctions relief.
"We will look at every option to deal with the challenge posed by Iran," Blinken said.
The European Union coordinator on Iran, Enrique Mora, plans to visit Tehran on Thursday, a trip diplomats from Britain, France and Germany, a group known as the E3, said came at a critical time as Iran keeps advancing its nuclear program.
"The nuclear situation has worsened continuously and seriously," said one E3 diplomat, alluding to Iran's accelerating enrichment of uranium to higher fissile purity, a possible pathway to a nuclear bomb.
"This therefore is from our E3 point of view not a 'business as usual' but a visit in (the) context of a deep crisis in the JCPOA," the diplomat added.
