US denied Israel permission to see Iran MoU before signing

Netanyahu said any arrangement with Tehran must be backed by military pressure.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Israel has not been allowed to review the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran and still does not know the full contents of the agreement expected to be signed Friday in Switzerland, N12 reported Tuesday.

The report said Israel requested access to the document from Washington but was refused.

Also Tuesday, President Donald Trump said he would hold a press conference on the agreement with Iran and promised to “read the document word for word.” He did not specify when the full text would be made public.

Earlier in the week, before the initial agreement was reached, Iran released a 14-point proposal. Trump later dismissed reports about the proposal as “fake news” and denied elements attributed to the emerging agreement, including a reported reconstruction plan for Iran.

Hezbollah said Tuesday that Iran had assured the group it would not sign the agreement unless it included an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.

Defense Minister Israel Katz said Monday that the Israel Defense Forces would not withdraw from Lebanon, reiterating a policy shared by both him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu addressed the developing diplomatic efforts during a press conference Monday, saying Israel does not yet know the final terms of any prospective agreement with Iran.

“I would not make that comparison yet,” Netanyahu said when asked to compare the emerging deal with previous agreements. “We do not know what the agreement will be.”

The prime minister said any arrangement with Tehran must be backed by military pressure.

“I can say that the fundamental difference between the situation then and the situation today is that every agreement must be accompanied by a credible military threat,” he said. “Back then there was no credible military threat. There was no military threat. Today, because of what we did — not only the United States, because of us, because we went in there with 14,000 sorties — that is the biggest difference.”

Netanyahu also said he would not limit Israel’s actions to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and stressed that military pressure remains a central factor in the current negotiations.