Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Sunday the pending return of world's powers to the nuclear deal with Iran will delay its plans to acquire a weapon by no more than 2.5 years.
World powers were reportedly nearing an agreement with their Iranian counterparts in talks in Vienna and a deal may be signed as early as this week. According to the reports, Iran will agree to suspend its nuclear program in exchange for sanction relief within a few months.
Speaking at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting, Bennett said that since 2015 when the original deal was signed, Iran improved their enrichment capabilities.
"Unless the deal includes an extension of restrictions on Iran - due to expire in 2025 - stadium-full centrifuges will be put into action and in exchange Iran will receive tens of billions of dollars in sanction relief," he said.
"That money will be directed towards terror that will endanger not only Israel but others in the region including U.S. forces deployed in the Middle East."
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Prime Minister Naftali Bennett (left) and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday
(Photo: Alexander Gamburg )
Bennett said Tehran's vast influx of funds from oil revenue would then be directed at proxies, including the Lebanon-based Hezbollah organization, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad terror groups in Gaza and the Houthi forces in Yemen.
The prime minister told the cabinet that Iran made great strides in recent years and is mere months away from possessing a nuclear weapon, making a new deal worse than the original one.
The United States lifted some sanctions earlier this month designed to facilitate discussions that would "help to close a deal on a mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA," according to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
On Sunday, a majority of Iran's parliament on Sunday issued a statement of conditions to be met if Tehran is to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal with global powers, the country's official IRNA news agency reported.
The 250 parliamentarians stated that U.S. and European parties should guarantee not to exit a revived agreement and that the "snapback mechanism" will not be triggered by them.
It also demanded the lifting of all U.S. sanctions in a verifiable process.