President Reuven Rivlin met with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Thursday on the sidelines of his state visit to Ethiopia, and thanked him for condemning Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' anti-Semitic comments on the Holocaust on Monday.
The meeting came in the wake of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's press conference on Monday exposing Iran's classified nuclear archive. Rivlin and Maas also discussed the Iranian issue and the dangers of Iran establishing a foothold in the region.
"We are following the arms build-up on our border," Rivlin said. "It's important for Germany and the entire free world to be aware of this build-up, and not to stand idly by as it happens. The Shiite axis in Syria and the Middle East, spearheaded by Iran, is a threat to the entire free world, not just Israel."
Rivlin stressed that Iran must not be allowed to entrench itself in Syria and Lebanon, and that international pressure is necessary to prevent this.
Maas thanked Rivlin for the opportunity to meet and said Israel's security is always a priority for Germany.
Meanwhile, European powers want to hand U.S. President Donald Trump a plan next week to save the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, but they have also started work on protecting EU-Iranian business ties if he makes good on his threat to withdraw, six sources told Reuters.
Iran's exports of mainly fuel and other energy products to the EU jumped 344% to 5.5 billion euros ($6.6 billion) in 2016 compared to the previous year, while investment in Iran jumped to more than 20 billion euros ($24 billion).
If Trump cannot be persuaded not to withdraw from the accord, "the second-best solution is to encourage the Americans to ... keep conditions that enable our companies in non-oil related sectors to continue to trade," a French official said.
The German Economy Ministry said it was waiting for a formal U.S. decision on the Iran deal before deciding whether to stop offering German firms export guarantees for business deals with Iran. Such guarantees provide state protection for companies doing business abroad when foreign debtors fail to pay.
The prospect of trade with Europe would provide the Europeans with a chance to assuage the Iranians and dissuade them from rash decisions such as leaving the deal or reviving the nuclear activities they agreed to give up.
Countermeasures could include a special EU blocking statute developed in the 1990s but never fully used to shield European firms doing business with Iran from U.S. legal action if Washington reimposes sanctions.
But EU plans to keep money flowing to Iran would require the United States to approve non-dollar-denominated export credit facilities and other funding support to help firms enter Iran without fear of American legal ramifications.
Two European officials said reviving the blocking statutes would still be mostly a symbolic step to show the Iranians that Europe is committed to the deal. In practice, companies would fear that investing in Iran would harm their commercial interests with the United States.
A senior Iranian official agreed.
"These are good ideas to show the Europeans are committed to the agreement, but we think that if they have to choose between Iran and the United States, they will choose America," the official said.
Trump, who says the 2015 accord is a "disaster," has all but decided to withdraw by May 12 and looks set to reject four months of European efforts to address his concerns, U.S. officials say.
But France, Britain and Germany aim to present the White House with a separate political agreement that commits to taking a tougher stance on Iran if they can agree to it in time with the U.S. State Department.
Several of the sources said they were skeptical the effort would succeed, and all said the Europeans were also working on damage limitation scenarios if it fails.
"We have a week to continue talking to the Americans to see if we can find an agreement on the deal," said a senior European diplomat. "But I don't think there is any reason to be overly optimistic."
The political agreement, which is a culmination of transatlantic diplomacy, does not include Iran or Russia and China, the other parties to the accord.
It seeks to spell out to Trump that Europe will seek to contain Tehran's ballistic missile program, its influence in Syria and Yemen, the terms by which inspectors visit suspect Iranian sites, and "sunset" clauses under which some of its terms expire.
While the Europeans and the Americans have narrowed their differences, they are struggling to agree on how to handle a U.S. desire to extend some of the limits on Iran's nuclear program without reopening the 2015 accord.
"We're trying to find the right formulas that respond to the expectations of the Americans, but at the same time not go against the deal," a second senior European diplomat said.
"There is a chance of getting an agreement, but even if we have we one, I'm not convinced that it will be enough to stop the U.S. withdrawing," the diplomat said.
The Europeans are also grappling with a U.S. desire to make explicit that Iran must give international inspectors access to military sites. The Europeans say this is already implicit in the original deal.
"There's a U.S. view that the inspection provisions aren't strong enough, which is not a view that is shared by the Europeans," said a third diplomat involved in the discussions.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are continuing to lobby Trump, but with the prospect of him changing his mind remote, the focus has shifted to managing the fallout and avoiding a dangerous vacuum.
In Washington last week, Macron proposed that, regardless of Trump's decision, there should be a wider discussion between Iran and the powers behind the original deal towards a grand bargain.
That would incorporate the existing nuclear deal, which took 12 years to negotiate, and the issues now being discussed between the Europeans and Americans.
But it is hard to see how Iran could be brought back to the table. Tehran says it is abiding by the terms of the deal and has no intention of renegotiating it.
Indeed, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Thursday rejected any form of renegotiation.
"Iran will not renegotiate what was agreed years ago and has been implemented," Zarif said in a video message posted on YouTube.
A senior adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also warned the Europeans on Thursday over "revising" the nuclear deal.
"Even if U.S. allies, especially the Europeans, try to revise the deal ... one of our options will be withdrawing from it," state television quoted Ali Akbar Velayati as saying.
Zarif added: "Let me make it absolutely clear and once and for all: We will neither outsource our security nor will we renegotiate or add onto a deal we have already implemented in good faith."
Referring to Trump's past as a property magnate, Zarif said, "To put it in real estate terms, when you buy a house and move your family in, or demolish it to build a skyscraper, you cannot come back two years later and renegotiate the price."
Defying Western demands, Iran has repeatedly said it has no intention of reducing its imprint in Middle East affairs and its ballistic missile capabilities, which it has said are defensive in nature and have nothing to with nuclear activity covered by the deal.
"It now appears that ... some Europeans have been offering more concessions from our pocket," Zarif said. "This appeasement [of Trump] entails a new deal that would include matters we all decided to exclude at the outset of our negotiations."
The United States has "consistently violated the nuclear deal, particularly by bullying others to prevent businesses from returning to Iran," Zarif said.
While directly criticizing the U.S. and Europe, Zarif did appear to leave some wiggle room for possible negotiations.
"It is Iran, and not the West, that has serious grievances and much to demand," Zarif says.
There was no immediate response from Washington.
Zarif's statements come as Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps continues to detain a number of dual nationals, Western citizens and others. Analysts and family members of the dual nationals and others detained in Iran say hard-liners in the Iranian security agencies use the prisoners as bargaining chips in negotiations with the West.
A U.N. panel in September described "an emerging pattern involving the arbitrary deprivation of liberty of dual nationals" in Iran. Tehran denied this.
