A credible United States military threat is needed to pressure Iran to negotiate a stronger tougher deal, an Israeli official told reporters after Prime Minister Yair Lapid wrapped up his two-day visit to Germany.
"Everyone is talking about a longer [time frame], [a more] comprehensive and stronger agreement," the official said, adding that "it's time to start this kind of dialogue
"The only thing that will send the Iranians there is an actual military threat," the official said.
"What we need now is the Americans to put a credible threat" on the table, the official said.
He recalled that former US President Barack Obama had done so and that it was this threat that prompted Tehran in 2015 to sign the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran deal.
The official explained that while in Germany Lapid had provided secret information, which showed that "the Iranians are cheating even as we speak," the official said.
This comes at a time when the Europeans, even more than the Americans, are concerned about the link between Iran and Russia, the official stated.
Lapid spoke about the need to abandon all efforts to revive the 2015 Iran deal during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on Monday morning.
"It is time to move past the failed negotiations with Iran. They can not and will not achieve the goals we all share to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon," Lapid said.
"We discussed the need for a new strategy to stop Iran's nuclear program. A nuclear Iran will destabilize the Middle East and create a nuclear arms race that will endanger the entire world," Lapid said.
"Returning to the nuclear agreement under the current conditions would be a critical mistake. Removing sanctions and pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into Iran would bring a wave of terrorism not only to the Middle East but across Europe," he said.
The two men spoke just days after the talks to revive the deal, dormant since 2018 hit a serious impasse. Iran has insisted that the International Atomic Energy Agency must end its probe into traces of uranium found at undeclared Iranian nuclear sites.
The US, France, Britain and Germany, all of whom are signatories to the deal, have refused to close the investigation.
Scholz told reporters in Berlin he understands that this means that the 2015 deal to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons is unlikely to be revived in the near future.
"We know that in the foreseeable future it will not happen although it looked like it would happen for some time," Scholz said.
Any Iranian use of atomic weapons would be devastating for the entire region and must be prevented, Scholz said.