Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and CIA Director William Burns discussed Iran and other regional issues in a meeting in Jerusalem on Wednesday.
“The situation in the Middle East, with an emphasis on Iran, and the possibility of broadening and deepening regional cooperation” were on the agenda, the Prime Minister’s Office said.
Mossad chief David Barnea, incoming National Security Adviser Eyal Hulata, Bennett’s Military Secretary Brig.-Gen. Avi Gil and his Diplomatic Adviser Shimrit Meir also took part in the meeting.
Burns and Barnea also met on Tuesday and discussed Iran’s nuclear project and additional regional challenges on which the [Mossad and CIA] intend to cooperate. Barnea presented Burns with Israel’s intelligence and concerns about new Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Hebrew media reported.
Separately, Burns and Defense Minister Benny Gantz met and discussed intelligence-sharing between their countries. Gantz presented Burns with information about Iranian attacks in the region and its nuclear program, the Defense Ministry said. He called for closer cooperation in the international arena to stabilize the region.
Burns also met with the head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Tamir Hayman, and was expected to go to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian intelligence chief Majed Faraj.
Burns’s visit came amid reports that the US is considering alternative ways to get Iran to stop advancing its nuclear program as negotiations to return to the 2015 Iran deal stall.
One option the US is weighing is limited sanctions relief in exchange for Iran freezing its uranium enrichment, Bloomberg reported. However, the US is still officially calling for a return to the nuclear agreement, with follow-up on negotiations to make it “longer and stronger.”
In recent months, Iran began to enrich uranium to 60%, develop uranium metal and block International Atomic Energy access to nuclear sites.
US and European officials are concerned that Iran’s violations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will become so advanced that it will make that nuclear deal irrelevant.
Israelis have long argued that Iran already has reached that point, with Defense Minister Benny Gantz saying last week that the Islamic Republic was potentially 10 weeks from a bomb.
Indirect nuclear talks between the US and Iran have been on hold for two months. Iranian negotiators declined to return to the table after its new president, Ebrahim Raisi, was elected, saying they must wait until a new government is in place. Raisi’s deadline to present a new government to Iran’s parliament is at the end of next week.
Raisi, who oversaw the executions of as many as 30,000 dissidents in 1988 and has been sanctioned by the US for human rights violations, has broadly been a major critic of engagement with the West and the JCPOA specifically. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has similarly made statements in recent weeks that the West cannot be trusted.
Between the long lull in negotiations and Raisi entering office, plus Iran’s recent attacks on ships in the Arabian Gulf, including on the Mercer Street vessel that killed a Romanian and a British national, many in the State Department think a return to the JCPOA is unlikely, though there is still a faction that remains hopeful, according to an Israeli official involved in talks with the US on Iran.