Continued negotiations between the international community and Iran have only
allowed it to play for time to develop weapons of destruction, an Israeli
official said on Saturday.
The official spoke with The Jerusalem Post,
one day after a meeting between United States Undersecretary of State Wendy
Sherman and National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror on Friday.
Sherman
arrived in Israel for a brief visit after participating in P5+1 talks with Iran
in Kazahkstan last Tuesday and Wednesday.
“The only concrete result of
the latest round of talks, is that the Iranians, have got more time that they
can exploit to move forward in their nuclear program,” the Israeli official
said.
During those talks, the six world powers involved in the talks —
the US, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany — offered Tehran the
option to ease their ban on trade in gold and other precious metals and
relaxation of an import embargo on Iranian petrochemical products.
In
exchange, a senior U.S official said, Iran would among other things have to
suspend uranium enrichment to a fissile concentration of 20 percent at its
Fordow underground facility and “constrain the ability to quickly resume
operations there.”
Western diplomats are hopeful that the talks could
lead to progress on halting Iran’s nuclear program, while Israel has remained
skeptical, believing that Iran is exploiting the situation.
Reuters
contributed to this report.
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