Israel welcomes German support for expanded Tehran deal

Israel welcomed Germany’s proposal to expand the Iran nuclear deal into a broader security agreement once Joe Biden assumes the US presidency next month.

Jeremy Issacharoff, the Israeli ambassador to Berlin, said a recent call by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to reassess the 2015 nuclear accord with a new US administration was a “step in the right direction”.

The 2015 nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, gave Iran relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear programme.

Mr Maas told Der Spiegel magazine this month that the existing agreement, under massive pressure after repeated Iranian breaches and US President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal in 2018, needed an overhaul.

The “nuclear agreement plus” envisaged by Mr Maas would bar the development of nuclear weapons as well as place restrictions on Tehran’s ballistic rocket programme and interference in countries around the region.

Mr Biden has signalled that Washington could rejoin the deal as a starting point for follow-on negotiations if Iran returned to compliance.

But Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif rejected talk of reopening the accord struck five years ago after marathon negotiations involving the US, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.

Mr Issacharoff said the socalled 5+1 partners needed to take Iran’s “destabilising involvement” in countries including Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq into account in any further negotiations with Tehran.

“I think people need to realise that you can’t just turn the clock back to 2015,” he told Agence France-Presse.

“There’s been a production of missiles and testing of missiles and these issues need to be addressed as well as the wholesale violations that Iran has carried out against the whole JCPOA agreement.”

The Israeli ambassador said he welcomed the more active involvement of Germany in Middle East diplomacy and the now robust “strategic partnership” that had developed in the 70 years since the Holocaust.

Anticipating an improvement in “tone” between Germany and the US with Mr Biden at the helm, he said Israel would like to see more of “a triangular type of strategic partnership” with the two countries on Middle East security issues.

He said it was Germany’s firm commitment to atone for Nazi atrocities that had allowed relations with Israel to flourish since the countries established diplomatic relations in 1965.

Mr Issacharoff highlighted “moving” visits by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to both the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and Auschwitz this year and joint military exercises in August between Israeli and German fighter pilots.

Mr Issacharoff said that as ties between Israel and four Arab nations – Morocco, the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan – normalise in deals brokered by Mr Trump’s administration, Germany had played a constructive role as well.

Noting that Mr Maas had hosted the first meeting between his Israeli and Emirati counterparts in October, Mr Issacharoff called it “a very important step for Germany and a very important sign of its commitment to the process”.

“I am very encouraged and very inspired by how far two countries can go after such a difficult period of time and become so close,” he said.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told ‘Der Spiegel’ magazine that the existing nuclear deal needed an overhaul