The Takeaway: Bennett has opening to sway Biden administration on Iran nuclear deal
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Hot take: Hezbollah missiles top agenda in US-Israel security dialogue
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is meeting US President Joe Biden on Thursday, and it’s no surprise that Iran and Hezbollah will be at the top of their agenda. Bennett, writes Ben Caspit, will try to get Biden’s support for Israel’s "strategic plan" to contain Iran, block its nuclear weapons aspirations and rein in what Jerusalem sees as a regional campaign of subversion, including via Hezbollah in Israel’s northern neighbor, Lebanon.
What’s new? Bennett’s visit comes as all talks on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, have hit a dead end. This may be an opportunity for Bennett. As recently as last month, the buzz was that the United States, the EU and Iran were close to signing off on a resurrection of the JCPOA, which President Donald Trump abandoned. But Iran couldn’t, or wouldn’t, close the deal under President Hassan Rouhani, and the nuclear file now sits with his more hard-line successor, Ebrahim Raisi, whom Bennett has called the "Hangman of Tehran," referring to Raisi’s role in mass executions of dissidents in the 1980s.
Hezbollah as tie-breaker. Iran has a de facto presence on Israel’s border, with Lebanon’s Hezbollah acting as a kind of subcontractor for Iran. In recent years, an uneasy truce with the "Party of God" has begun to fray, as evidence accumulates that Hezbollah has acquired, and is expanding, its arsenal of precision missiles. Some Israeli security sources refer to this capability as a "tie-breaker," according to Caspit. The missile production facilities are located in Lebanon as well as Syria.
