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CFI Parliamentary Chairman (Commons) Rt. Hon. Stephen Crabb MP has said we “must not repeat the mistakes of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran” in an interview with GB News. His call for the UK to work with its allies to prevent Iran “gaining a destructive force it would be willing to use”, comes amid mounting speculation that the P5+1 and Iran are close to signing a renewed JCPOA nuclear deal. Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid warned that a “bad deal” was taking shape which would give Iran and it’s terror proxies a major financial boost but said that pressure from Israel has had some positive effects in changing the U.S’s position on elements of a renewed JCPOA agreement.
Mr Crabb said there was a “real sense of foreboding” not just in Israel but also amongst our allies in the Gulf States that the renewed terms of the nuclear deal will not prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. He warned that Iran‘s development of a nuclear weapon has become “not just a question of if but when”, which has only been exasperated by Iran playing a “cat and mouse game” and “laughing at the Western alliance” as it “strings along” the JCPOA negotiations in Vienna.
Crabb discussed the anxiety among Conservative colleagues in Parliament who have raised concerns over the reported terms of the final draft agreement, saying “we don’t want a repeat of the 2015 deal”. He added that Iran has made significant progress in its nuclear programme since the original agreement and the 2015 deal did very little in stopping “Iran’s support for terrorism”.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Lapid stated Israel has been successful in persuading the White House against certain elements of the near-final draft of the renewed JCPOA. He said: “The Americans accepted a large part of the things that we wanted them to include in the drafts”. However, he reiterated: “the current deal is a bad deal”. On Wednesday, Iran said it received Washington’s response to its final demands to the agreement, with a U.S. official stating: “We are closer now than we were even just a couple weeks ago because Iran made a decision to make some concessions”.
