Top U.S. and Israeli national security officials met Thursday with a secure video conference for the first round of their talks on Iran and other regional issues while the Biden administration looks to avoid Jerusalem’s hostility while believing they will revive the US-Iran nuclear deal.
The first meeting of a US-Israel strategic advisory group led by national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his Israeli group, Meir Ben-Shabbat, comes as President Joe Biden’s national security team has made efforts to persuade the Israelis about his efforts in Iran.
Sullivan has also held at least two lengthy calls with Ben-Shabbat ahead of Thursday’s meeting.
National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne said in a statement that “both sides shared views on regional security issues of mutual interest and concern, including Iran, and expressed the common intention to to address the challenges and threats facing the region. “
The talks came after Secretary of State Antony Blinken made his first glance before Congress stressed Biden’s commitment to consult with Israel, and other Gulf countries, “on something whatever we could do go ahead with that agreement “with Iran.
“We have to engage with them because it affects them being removed, not the way in,” Blinken told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday. to do so. “
Biden is trying to avoid the kind of snoring that President Barack Obama faced before he signed Iran ‘s nuclear deal, in which Tehran agreed to destroy its uranium-rich stock, opened itself to the study by the International Atomic Energy Agency and more into an exchange for sanction relief.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly criticized the agreement, including at a speech to Congress where he called Obama’s effort a “farewell to military control.”
President Donald Trump, who counted Netanyahu as one of his closest friends among foreign leaders, withdrew from the nuclear deal in May 2018.
Biden announced last month that his administration is ready to join talks with Iran and world powers to consider a return to the 2015 treaty, in a sharp recap of “a major pressure campaign Trump who was trying to separate the Islamic Republic.
White House officials have said the U.S. is willing to return to the nuclear deal as soon as Tehran demonstrates “strict compliance” with the terms of the deal.
Iran, however, has firmly adhered to demands for a full lift of the sanctions imposed by Trump before he returns to the negotiating table.