![]() counterparts in the eye and gauge if their worst fears about Washington’s plans were in fact true. The Israelis’ overriding mission was clear: to look their U.S. President Joe Biden himself dropped by Cohen’s White House meeting for an hourlong discussion. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CIA Director Bill Burns, and other senior U.S. Together and separately, they held meetings with U.S. Tamir Hayman and the air force general in charge of Israel’s Iran strategy, Tal Kelman. The Israeli delegation included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security advisor, Meir Ben-Shabbat the head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen the chief intelligence officer of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Gen. press, my impression from people familiar with the discussions is that the they may well mark the moment that the countdown to a new war in the Middle East began. Though last week’s talks got almost no attention in the U.S. If Washington’s strategy leaves Israel convinced that it faces a choice between fighting a much weakened Iran now or a much stronger Iran on a glide path to nuclear weapons a few years from now, no one should be surprised if Israel chooses the former. ![]() ![]() That’s not a risk that the Israelis are prepared to take lying down, as they’ve repeatedly made clear. Israel is adamantly opposed to the agreement, arguing that in exchange for a pause in Tehran’s nuclear program, it virtually guarantees that Iran can become a nuclear-weapons threshold state by the time the deal expires in 2030, while immediately funneling billions of dollars to a revolutionary regime single-mindedly focused not just on sowing aggression and terrorism across the Middle East but on the destruction of the Jewish state itself. A small army of top Israeli national security officials descended on Washington last week for their first in-person consultations with the Biden administration over its intention to return to the Iran nuclear deal.
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