Israel open to German efforts to expand Iran deal

BERLIN – Israel welcomes a German push to expand the Iran nuclear deal into a broader security agreement once Joe Biden moves into the White House next month, its ambassador to Berlin said.

Jeremy Issacharoff, the nation’s envoy in Germany since 2017, said a recent call by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to reassess the 2015 nuclear accord with a new United States administration was a “step in the right direction”.

The 2015 nuclear deal – known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA – gave Iran relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear programme.

Maas told Der Spiegel magazine this month that the existing agreement, under massive pressure after repeated Iranian violations and Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal in 2018, needed an overhaul.

The “nuclear agreement plus” envisaged by Maas would bar the development of nuclear weapons as well as place restrictions on Tehran's ballistic rocket programme and interference in countries around the region.

Biden has signalled that Washington could rejoin the deal as a starting point for follow-on negotiations if Iran returned to compliance.

But Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has rejected talk of reopening the accord struck five years ago after marathon talks involving the US, Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia.

Issacharoff said the so-called 5+1 partners needed to take Iran’s “destabilising involvement” in countries including Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq into account in any further negotiations with Tehran.

“I think people need to realise that you can’t just turn the clock back to 2015,” he said.

“There's been a production and testing of missiles and these issues need to be addressed as well as the wholesale violations that Iran has carried out against the whole JCPOA agreement.”

Issacharoff said he welcomed more active involvement of Germany in Middle East diplomacy and the now robust “strategic partnership” that had developed in the 70 years since the Holocaust.

Anticipating a vast improvement in “tone” between Germany and the US with Biden at the helm, he said Israel would like to see more of “a triangular type of strategic partnership” with the two countries on Middle East security issues “which I think would be very good for all sides”. – AFP, December 24, 2020