Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer urged Democrats running for president in 2020 who want the U.S. to re-enter the 2015 Iran nuclear deal to "reconsider," saying on Monday that getting the U.S. back into such parameters "would be very dangerous for the State of Israel."
President Donald Trump announced his administration's withdrawal from the deal in May 2018 and soon thereafter reimposed sanctions.
The candidates involved are Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont); Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts); Kamala Harris (D-California); Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota); Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii); former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro; author and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson; and Wayne Messam, mayor of Miramar, Florida.
"I hope that those candidates will reconsider because it would be very dangerous for the State of Israel," Dermer told an audience at a breakout session at the annual American Jewish Committee Global Forum in Washington, D.C.
Elaborating further, he said that "if there were a deal on the table that would actually block Iran's path to a bomb, I would have gone house to house in [the United States] and convince people to support. The reason why we opposed it was because that is not what the deal does. The statements at the time that this did block Iran's path to a bomb were simply untrue."
According to Dermer, "The danger in the deal is all the restraints that were put in place in this deal were automatically removed in 10 to 15 years, which seems like a long time in a life of politics and it is, but it's a blink of an eye in the life of a country."
Dermer noted that Iran's goal in concluding the 2015 deal was to buy time and get legitimacy for a nuclear bomb after the deal expired. "Our concern is that when this deal is in place [with] Iran, all they have to do is wait. They don't have to change their behavior. They just wait," he said.
"Iran is advancing its nuclear weapons program today," he stressed. "If you think the deal froze it, you're wrong. Because Iran is doing research and development on advanced centrifuges," Dermer said.
This article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
