(by Andrea Pinto) Joe Biden reassured Israel: "Washington has" a long way to go "before re-entering the 2015 agreement to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions". Skipping every protocol rule, Biden met the director of the Mossad Yossi Cohen last Friday. Cohen along with a delegation from Tel Aviv was in America to discuss bilateral security issues with senior officials of the Biden administration, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Brett McGurk, who is the National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa.
The following day, the Mossad chief visited the White House to discuss "regional security issues" with Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Central Intelligence Agency director William Burns. During that meeting, according to what reported by Israeli television Channel 12, the president of the United States intervened unexpectedly avoiding the rigid protocols of the ceremonial (It is unusual for a president to meet an official of a third country who is not a prime minister or an equal) The pretext was to express the condolences of his administration for the dead during the religious service in Israel. Biden's unexpected appearance was also confirmed by a spokesperson for the National Security Council.
Over the weekend, Israeli newspapers and the US website Axios, however, later reported that the meeting between Biden and the head of the Mossad was organized because the US president wanted to "deal with the Iran dossier". According to rumors, the two would have entertained for about an hour. Cohen represented to the American president Israel's disappointment at a return to the nuclear deal with Iran before making improvements in a more restrictive sense. Biden of course, as is appropriate in these cases, he only listened by saying at the end of the meeting that his administration was not yet ready to re-enter the agreement and that in any case Washington would consult Israel first on the matter.
THE FEARS OF TEL AVIV
Last weekend there was the third day of negotiations in Vienna between the US and Iran, with the aim of returning to the nuclear agreement, JCPOA. A turning point that, as we have seen, does not appeal to Israel, which has always been threatened by Iran with being razed to the ground with an atomic bomb. The fear is not only the easing of sanctions against Iran but also the approach of the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman with Tehran. The spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of the Islamic Republic, Saeed Khatibzadeh greeted the new course as follows: "Two important countries of the region and of the Islamic world could open a new chapter of commitment and cooperation through a constructive dialogue to achieve peace, stability and development in the region by overcoming disputes".
Israel is very concerned that the Vienna meetings are producing unexpected results. Apparently, some economic sanctions in favor of the Islamic Republic could be withdrawn as early as 18 June.
The satisfaction of the progress in the negotiations also in a tweet by the Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif: "Positive signs on the horizon". Zarif was also recently in the Gulf for a number of high-level meetings. A tour that Iran's ultra-conservative supreme leader, theAyatollah Ali Khamenei. In fact, within the Islamic Republic, the competition between the government's Westernists and the conservatives who rely on the spiritual guide is very strong and it is not certain that the castle set up in Vienna and in the Gulf can fall at any moment, undermined by the powerful Israelis and from the religious wing of Tehran that wants to preserve the status quo. It is no coincidence that Biden wanted to meet with his Israeli counterpart before going into even more details of the Vienna talks.