As tensions rise between Iran and the West, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned in an interview that Tehran was drawing “dangerously close” to producing nuclear weapons and using those weapons to attack western nations along with Israel.

“Iran is enriching uranium at an unprecedented rate and moving dangerously close to getting their hands on nuclear weapons,” he told the UK’s Daily Telegraph in an interview.

Bennett called upon the global community to join Israel and put pressure on Iran’s nuclear program and ambitions. “Without pressure from the West, the Islamic regime in Iran could get their hands on a nuclear bomb very soon,” he said.

“The world must take a firm stance and tell the Islamic regime in Iran: no nukes, no sanctions. Iran’s nuclear program won’t stop until it’s stopped.” According to reports, this policy would be separate from any possible future deal between Tehran and the West.

Bennett’s comments came amid the UN nuclear watchdog formally censuring Iran over its nuclear program, hours after the Islamic Republic said it had disconnected some of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s cameras monitoring its nuclear sites.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the IAEA director-general, noted that Iran has removed 27 surveillance cameras from nuclear sites in the country, raising the risk of its inspectors being unable to track Tehran’s advances and activities as it enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.

In just a few short weeks, it would be unable to maintain a “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s program,” the IAEA chief said Thursday. “This would be a fatal blow” to negotiations over Iran’s tattered 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Grossi said.
Iran has built up large warehouses of enriched uranium, some of it enriched to levels far higher than needed for simple nuclear power generation.

The talks to revive the 2015 nuclear accord started in April 2021 under the Biden administration with many skeptical about how trustworthy Iranian negotiators really are.

Negotiations have stalled in recent months and the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell mentioned that the possibility of returning to the accord was “shrinking.”