Biden meets with Rivlin: Iran will not obtain nuclear weapons
Joe Biden assured the Israeli president that Iran will not acquire nuclear weapons during his presidency. Biden will also meet with the new Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, soon.
US President Joe Biden assured Israeli President Reuven Rivlin at the White House on Monday, June 28, that he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.
“What I can tell you is that Iran will never, under my watch, obtain a nuclear weapon,” he stressed in a conversation with Rivlin. Biden said he was determined to “confront Iran’s destabilizing activities and its support for terrorist forces in the Middle East.”
Rivlin told reporters after meeting with Biden that he was “very satisfied” with the US president’s remarks on Iran and that Israel and the United States “must work together.”
Biden wants to meet with Israel's new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett "soon," White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, without giving a specific date for the meeting.
Naftali Bennett, Israel's new foreign minister, managed to form a new coalition government with parties from different political spectrums in mid-June, thus ending Netanyahu's term as prime minister. Bennett announced immediately after taking office that he wanted to improve relations with Europe and the American Democrats.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, in his meeting with his American counterpart, Anthony Blinken, on Sunday, stated that his country has "serious concerns" about the possible return of the United States to the JCPOA.
Biden's meeting with the outgoing Israeli president, who leaves office on July 9, came a day after US airstrikes on Iranian-backed militia bases in Iraq and Syria, an attack that was criticized by the US Congress.
Biden rejected congressional criticism of his order for the airstrikes, saying he had “the authority.” The Pentagon described the strikes as a response to dozens of attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq in the past few months.
