US and Israel plot strikes on Iran as nuclear talks stall

Joe Biden warns the US is preparing ‘additional measures’ against Tehran as talks on halting its nuclear program head for failure.

Lloyd Austin, right, holds an official military welcome for Benny Gantz at the Pentagon on Thursday. Picture: AFP

Israel held high-level talks with the US on Thursday night over a plan threatening to bomb Iran as negotiations over its nuclear program headed towards stalemate.

Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz held talks in Washington with the Pentagon and White House advisers. Leaks to Reuters news agency said that the proposals included joint exercises simulating a bombing raid to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.

President Joe Biden warned after the talks that the US was preparing “additional measures” against Iran as expectations grow that talks on halting Tehran’s nuclear program are set for failure.

“The President has asked his team to be prepared in the event that diplomacy fails and we must turn to other options,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said as troubled negotiations with Iran resumed in Vienna.

“We will have no choice but to take additional measures.”

US and Israeli flags adorn cookies served during the meeting at the Pentagon. Picture: AFP

After his meeting at the Pentagon with Mr Gantz, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said both sides had said they would expand co-operation in the face of the ­Iranian “threat”. “I’m deeply concerned about the Iranian government’s nuclear actions in recent months, both its continued provocations and its lack of constructive diplomatic engagement,” Mr Austin said.

The visit was timed to coincide with renewed attempts to settle terms for the US and Iran to return to the 2015 deal limiting its nuclear program.

Enrique Mora, the EU negotiator who chaired the resumed talks in Vienna, said participants showed “a renewed sense of purpose” but they “don’t have all the time in the world”. Agreement had seemed close before Iran’s presidential elections in June. Since then the country has continued to build a stockpile of higher-enriched uranium. Both sides insist that they will only rejoin the deal with added conditions the other cannot accept.

The impasse has led to hostile rhetoric on both sides. Mr Gantz said as he left for Washington: “Iran is a threat to world peace and seeks to become an existential threat to Israel. We will discuss possible courses of action to ensure that it stops its attempt to reach the nuclear arena and expand its activities.”

The Vienna talks were supposed to prepare for higher-level negotiations on Friday night and over the weekend. They followed a previous round last week that diplomats described in gloomy terms. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has imposed new conditions after his election victory, including a demand for compensation for Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the original deal in 2018. He also wants all sanctions imposed since then to be lifted, as well as a US guarantee that it will never again withdraw from the deal unilaterally.

The US, in turn, might have ­secured a deal in the northern spring if it had not insisted that Iran agree to further talks about its broader Middle East policies.

Israel and the US have been threatening to bomb Iran for years. The terms of reference changed this year after Iran began to enrich uranium to 60 per cent purity, just short of the 90 per cent required for a nuclear device.

Mr Biden’s advisers have begun to suggest that the program will soon have gone too far for it to be worth trying to salvage the deal, since Iran would essentially still be a nuclear threshold state.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week he was “not hopeful” that the Vienna talks would succeed. Robert Malley, the US envoy to Iran, has said America “would not sit idly by” as Tehran continued to enrich uranium.

He and Mr Blinken were said to be focusing first on non-military action. The Wall Street Journal reported that a delegation was being sent to the United Arab Emirates, a US ally, to warn that Washington intended to close loopholes in sanctions policy that allowed trade with Iran to continue.

However, Washington has been careful not to remove the military option while Israel prepared to strike. The government of Naftali Bennett has set aside $US1.5bn ($2.1bn) for aircraft, drones and bunker-buster bombs to take on Iran. Israel’s intentions have been made clear in a series of speeches by members of the sec­urity establishment. Avi Kochavi, the chief of staff, said this week: “We remember that decision in war is achieved through offence. We are fortifying continuously and significantly, and in the past year towards Iran in particular.”

The Times