Israel says Iran has two months left to obtain the nuclear weapon

The Israeli Defense Minister, Benny Gantz, said today that Iran has two months left to obtain the necessary materials and manufacture the atomic weapon, for which he demanded a plan of prevention other than resuming the 2015 nuclear pact.

“We do not know if the Iranian regime will be willing to sign an agreement and return to the negotiating table, but the international community must build a viable plan B to stop Iran on its way to a nuclear weapon,” Gantz told a meeting today with sixty ambassadors in Tel Aviv.

Gantz made these remarks when Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Benet is in Washington on his first official visit, in which he will discuss with US President Joe Biden tomorrow the Iranian nuclear threat and propose alternative solutions to the nuclear pact.

Iran and the G5 + 1 powers signed in 2015 a pact for the country to stop its atomic program, an agreement that former US President Donald Trump left in 2018, but that the Biden administration hopes to resume or renegotiate.

Israel has always opposed this pact, considering that the G5 + 1 powers made too many concessions, lifting almost all sanctions without forcing Iran to paralyze its uranium enrichment program one hundred percent.

The Israeli minister was in favor of the diplomatic channel to achieve an agreement “longer, stronger and broader ‘than the previous one”, since “an Iranian nuclear program could incite an arms race in the region and the entire world”.

However, he noted that, if necessary, Israel could carry out unilateral military action. “Israel has the means to act and will not hesitate to do so. I do not rule out the possibility that Israel will have to act in the future to prevent a nuclear Iran,” he said.

Gantz recalled that the “Iranian threat” is terrestrial, since the Islamic republic operates “through its representatives in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza”; aerial because it uses drones and guided missiles in its attacks; maritime, to “interrupt international trade”; and it is also in cyberspace.

The minister said Iran was behind the drone attack on the Mercer Street ship, operated by an Israeli company, in the Persian Gulf in July, in which two crew members were killed.

“Our assessment is that the drone used in the attack was launched from Iranian territory and approved by the Iranian leadership,” said Gantz, who stressed that Iran has doubled its military investment in five years to $ 49 billion.