JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday
opened his first Cabinet meeting since swearing in his new coalition
government last week with a condemnation of the new Iranian president.
He said Iran's presidential election was a sign for world powers to
“wake up” before returning to a nuclear agreement with Tehran.
Iran’s
hard-line judiciary chief, Ebrahim Raisi, was elected Saturday with 62%
of the vote amid a historically low voter turnout. He is sanctioned by
the U.S. in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands
of political prisoners in 1988, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Raisi
has not commented specifically on the event.
Bennett said at the Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem that “of all the people
that (Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei could have chosen,
he chose the hangman of Tehran, the man infamous among Iranians and
across the world for leading the death committees that executed
thousands of innocent Iranian citizens throughout the years.”
Iran and world powers were set to resume indirect talks in Vienna on
Sunday to resurrect Tehran’s tattered 2015 nuclear deal, which granted
Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
For
weeks, Iranian and American diplomats have been negotiating a return to
the accord in the Austrian capital through European intermediaries.
Sunday’s talks are the first since the election of Raisi, which will put hard-liners firmly in control across Iran’s government.
The
landmark nuclear deal between world powers and Iran, which Israel
opposed, collapsed after President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew
the United States from the accord in 2018. That decision has seen Iran,
over time, abandon every limitation on enrichment and Tehran is
currently enriching uranium at its highest levels ever, though still
short of weapons-grade levels.
Bennett said Raisi's election as Iranian president was “the last
chance for the world powers to wake up before returning to the nuclear
agreement and to understand who they’re doing business with.
“These
guys are murderers, mass murderers: a regime of brutal hangmen must
never be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction that will enable it
to not kill thousands, but millions," he said.
Israel has long
stated that it opposes arch-enemy Iran's nuclear program and said it
would prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Iran insists its
nuclear program is intended for peaceful purposes.
Earlier this
month, Israel's outgoing Mossad intelligence chief signaled that Israel
was behind a string of recent attacks targeting the country’s nuclear
program.
Bennett heads a broad coalition of parties ranging from Jewish
ultranationalists to liberal factions and a small Islamist party. His
government convened its first Cabinet meeting since it was sworn in last
week, ousting long-time prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu from office
and sending him to the opposition for the first time in 12 years.
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