Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the framework agreement on the Iranian nuclear program being sought by world powers is even worse than his country had feared.
"This deal, as it appears to be emerging, bears out all of our fears, and even more than that," Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem as the United States with five other world powers and Iran are working toward a March 31 deadline in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Israel has mounted what it terms an "uphill battle" against an agreement that might ease sanctions on the Iranians while leaving them with a nuclear infrastructure with bomb-making potential.
"The Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis is very dangerous to humanity, and must be stopped," Netanyahu said, accusing Iran of trying to "conquer the entire Middle East" while moving toward nuclearization.
“After the Beirut-Damascus-Baghdad axis, Iran is maneuvering from the south to take over the entire Middle East.’’
“While world powers convene to sign this deal, Iran’s proxies in Yemen are conquering large swaths of land in an effort to overtake the Bab al-Mandab straits, so that they can change the balance of power in shipping oil,” the Prime Minister said, referring to the unrest in Yemen where soldiers loyal to the Saudi-backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi are fighting agains Iranian-allied Houthis rebels.
Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon also called the emerging deal with Iran “a very bad deal.” Turning Iran into a nuclear threshold state, he said Sunday, “would be nothing less than a tragedy for the moderate regimes in the Middle East and the entire Western world.”
“You don’t need to be an intelligence officer to see Iran is lying barefacedly, and is today the greatest danger to the stability of the Middle East,” he said.
Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz voiced cautious hope that the negotiations would collapse as they have in the past.
"We may still have a chance. We are not alone. There are still great doubts in the United States as well as in France, even in England," Steinitz told Israel Radio.
He said Israel was in an "uphill battle".
The European Union's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, who joined the Lausanne talks, said they had never been closer to a deal in Iran's nuclear negotiations, while there were still some critical points to be resolved.
"We have some difficult points that need be solved and we will be working over the weekend to bridge the gaps," Federica Mogherini told reporters in Lausanne, Switzerland, where talks are being held between delegates from Iran, the U.S., Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany -- dubbed the P5+1.
Mogherini said she was optimistic about the negotiations and "substantial" progress was made in the past weeks, calling them "positive.”
"But still there are some points on which we have to work very hard to find solutions that are good," she said.
She defined a desirable solution as one "that can guarantee that Iran has no nuclear weapons and cannot develop nuclear weapons, but still can develop civil nuclear program.”
The talks had recently been ramped up amid concerns that a failure to produce a framework deal before March 31 could jeopardize any positive outcome of a final agreement, due by July 1.
The P5+1 have claimed Iran is developing nuclear weapons and want its program curbed in return for the lifting of sanctions.
The deal sought by the six-member group would have Iran accept limits on its uranium enrichment capacity and would allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspections without interference
But Israeli Minister Steinitz said earlier this week, during a visit to Paris where he had talks with French leaders, Israel believed the current deal, which would allow roughly 6,000 centrifuges, would enable Iran ‘’to dash to the bomb’’ within nine to 10 months because its nuclear infrastructure would not be dismantled.