US Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on March 28, in Israel
The Biden administration has recently started discussing with Israel a “Plan B” scenario in case the 2015 nuclear with Iran deal known as JCPOA is not revived.
According to Axios, Israel is pressing the Biden administration to cooperate on a “Plan B” in case long-running negotiations with Iran fail.
US and Israeli officials said that Israel’s national security adviser Eyal Hulata is scheduled to arrive in Washington later this week for meetings of the strategic working group on Iran with his American counterpart, Jake Sullivan.
Headed by the national security advisers on both sides, the working group — code-named “Opal” ("Leshem" in Hebrew) — was established in the early days of the Obama administration to strategize over how to apply pressure on Iran.
In phone a call on Sunday, President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett discussed the threat posed by Iran and its proxies, and the possibility of removing Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, aka IRGC, from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) that Tehran has demanded.
Bennett said in a statement after the call, “I am sure that President Biden… will not allow the IRGC to be removed from the list… Israel has clarified its position on the issue: The IRGC is the largest terrorist organization in the world."
Pundits now consider a deal to restoration of the JCPOA much less likely than in mid-March when it appeared to be only a few days away, as Tehran and Washington both insist on their positions.