On 2 September, Ram Ben-Barak, the head of the Israeli Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee, said in a radio interview that “we must draft a much better [version of the Iran nuclear deal] with a much longer stick. And this is what we are not seeing,”

“What Israel wants is something better in place of this deal. Something better means telling the Iranians, ‘listen, you will not have a nuclear program,'” Ben-Barak added.

A day earlier, the director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Tamir Hayman, said the “only way” to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon is to conclude a deal with Tehran.

Hayman said, “Recently, Israeli officials have tried to influence the American stance and prevent the signing of a deal with Iran. However, it is important to remember that we are not looking between excellent or ideal options, but between options currently in hand, an agreement or no agreement.”

The Israeli official pointed out that it is impossible to formulate an excellent agreement that meets all of Israel’s interests in the current period because “the common interest of the great powers differs significantly from ours, as well as different visions concerning Iranian intentions in the long run.”

“Iran has stated that it will not agree to any additional concessions beyond its concessions in 2015, and certainly not before achieving an agreement to return to the basic 2015 agreement,” Tamir Hayman said, adding that “Iran’s position has not changed despite the harsh economic sanctions in recent years.”

Hayman revealed that the INSS “analyzed the scenario of the absence of a nuclear agreement with Iran, and came to the conclusion that Iran will advance in its nuclear program, and this will bring it to a nuclear threshold that will enable it to penetrate a nuclear weapon in a short period.”

Hayman stressed that Israel must shift from “sweeping opposition” to the nuclear agreement to “changing small and technical details” to improve it and make sure the deal will return to previous conditions, that is, a low level of enrichment, in addition to dismantling the infrastructure of advanced centrifuges operating today, and tightening supervision from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In contrast, the former Major General and National Security Advisor of Israel, Yaakov Amidror, blamed the Biden White House for misleading the Israeli government about contacting Iran through a communications channel unknown to the Israelis, which Israel itself only later discovered.

Israel has been scrambling to jettison a potential revival of the Iran nuclear deal and the end of crushing US sanctions on the Islamic Republic.