Foreign Ministry Director-General Alon Ushpiz on Wednesday said, "It's time to stop Iran" at a meeting in Brussels with senior European Union officials according to a ministry statement.

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The comments come ahead of next week's quarterly meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors, the UN nuclear watchdog tasked with inspecting Iran's nuclear facilities.

According to the ministry statement, Ushpiz told the EU officials Iran was advancing toward nuclear weapons capabilities every day and that now is the time to stop Iran's nuclear program.

Talks in Vienna on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are set to resume on November 29 for the first time since late June, when negotiations were stalled with the election of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi to the role of president.

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Ushpiz is in Brussels to bolster diplomatic ties between Israel and the EU.

During the visit, he held high-level talks with European Foreign Service Secretary-General Stefano Sannino and met with European Parliament Secretary-General Klaus Welle.

The director-general also held talks with senior NATO officials and met with ambassadors of the 27 EU-member states.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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The diplomats aim to examine issues linked to the implementation of the nuclear accord after Iran surpassed stockpile and enrichment limits set out in the deal.

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Iran recently begun surpassing uranium enrichment limits in the 2015 nuclear deal, saying these moves can be reversed if the other parties to the agreement – Germany, France, Britain, China, Russia and the European Union – come up with enough economic incentives to offset the US sanctions that US President Donald Trump reinstated after pulling his country from the nuclear accord.

Experts warn that higher enrichment and a growing stockpile narrow the one-year window Iran would need to have enough material to make an atomic bomb, something Iran denies it wants but the deal prevented.

Last week, French authorities in a meeting with an Iranian envoy stressed the need for Tehran to quickly respect the 2015 nuclear accord it has breached and "make the needed gestures" to de-escalate mounting tensions in the Persian Gulf region.

Iran has taken increasingly provocative actions against ships in the Gulf, including seizing a British tanker, and downing a US drone.

The US has expanded its military presence in the region and fears are growing of a wider conflict.

Trump pulled the US out of the deal last year unilaterally, saying he wanted to negotiate a better one.

Under the provisions of the accord, signatories provided Iran with economic sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on the country's nuclear program, but the latest US sanctions have highlighted the inability of the Europeans, as well as Russia and China, to keep up with their commitments.

Iran's recent moves – which it defends as permissible after the US withdrawal – are seen as a way to force the others to openly confront the sanctions.

At the same time, Europe is under pressure from the US to abandon the Iran nuclear accord – the  Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA as the deal is formally known – entirely and it also is being squeezed by Iran to offset the ever-crippling effects of American economic sanctions.

That has left the Europeans' soft-power approach strained to its limits at a time of increasing tensions in the Middle East.

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