As European officials submitted a final take-it-or-leave-it proposal to restore the Iran nuclear deal, reports say Israeli officials believe Iran is unlikely to agree to a return to the 2015 pact.
Anonymous sources told Hebrew media on Tuesday that Israel is convinced Tehran will not accept the latest text Western negotiators have agreed upon as diplomats returned home from Vienna following the most recent round of talks.
According to Haaretz, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will block the move as Europe’s recent confidence in renewed confidence in the talks is just ‘manufactured optimism’ designed to pressure Tehran.
“There was momentary optimism, but very quickly it turned out to be contrived optimism meant to pressure the Iranians into making a decision, hopefully accepting the text as it was presented,” the officials said.
“There wasn’t any strategic shift in terms of the Iranians. They don’t want to accept this agreement, and they will struggle to accept anything that isn’t a significant improvement of the original nuclear deal,” one Israeli official argued.
The new text includes guarantees that foreign companies will be able to invest in Iran or operate there once sanctions are lifted, without fearing the repercussions of any party withdrawing from the deal, as the United States did in 2018 under President Donald Trump, but Tehran demanded more drastic concessions outside the scope of the original agreement, including over an International Atomic Energy Agency probe into undeclared nuclear material found in the country.
