Ex-Mossad chief: Use positive Bennett-Biden meeting to stop Iran

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021 07:59

Israel should use the positive meeting last week between Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and US President Joe Biden to stop Iran’s march toward hegemony in the Middle East and toward a nuclear weapon, former Mossad director Yossi Cohen wrote on Wednesday.

In his first public op-ed since retiring as Mossad chief in June, Cohen wrote in Yediot Ahronot, “especially in light of the positive relations prevailing between Jerusalem and Washington, between Prime Minister Bennett and President Biden, these messages [stopping Iran] could be accepted positively in my estimation and could be internalized by the US’s policymakers.”

More specifically, he hooked on to Biden’s statement about preventing Iran from going nuclear at any time, and not merely during his current term, as a sign that Washington was in a unique position of being open to altering its policy of simply wanting to negotiate a weak nuclear deal with Tehran.

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Cohen warned that the speedy fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban along with the current Biden administration’s constant push to return to the 2015 JCPOA Iran nuclear deal is a formula for disaster and must be confronted quickly.

The former Mossad chief expressed concern that the US may soon fully withdraw from Iraq as it did in Afghanistan, which could lead to the current Iraqi regime falling and becoming completely dominated by the Islamic Republic.

The US has already announced an end to combat missions in Iraq, but, at least to date, has maintained a small force of a few thousand military advisers for the Iraqi government which has tried to maintain positive relations with both America and Tehran.

Cohen wrote that he was concerned that either this limited mission or any future reduction in the US physical presence in Iraq could alter the face of the region by empowering Iranian control in the large and influential country.

He discussed Iran’s four-year-long public campaign to create a land bridge through the region and a “circle of fire” around Israel, including the presence of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel and proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza.

Next, he said that Iran’s plan to move forward with advanced centrifuges and enrich uranium in two underground nuclear facilities (which are harder to attack from the air) at Fordow and Natanz, are bringing it closer to a nuclear weapon.

Cohen warned that the JCPOA, without a major overhaul, would allow Iran to reach a nuclear weapon when it expires in 2030, or even earlier.