Israel’s new leader warns Iran’s election a sign for world leaders to ‘wake up’ on nuclear deal

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said incoming Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi’s government ‘must never be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction’

Israel also launched an official investigation into the deadly stampede at a religious festival at Mount Meron in April that left 45 people dead

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Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has warned of dangers with Iran’s new leader. Photo: AP

Published: 9:15pm, 20 Jun 2021Updated: 9:19pm, 20 Jun 2021

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday opened his first cabinet meeting since swearing in his new coalition government last week with a condemnation of the new Iranian president. He said Iran’s presidential election was a sign for world powers to “wake up” before returning to a nuclear agreement with Tehran.

Iran’s hardline judiciary chief, Ebrahim Raisi, was elected on Saturday with 62 per cent of the vote although there was a low voter turnout. He is sanctioned by the US in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Raisi has not commented specifically on the event.

Bennett said at the cabinet meeting in Jerusalem that “of all the people that [Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei could have chosen, he chose the hangman of Tehran, the man infamous among Iranians and across the world for leading the death committees that executed thousands of innocent Iranian citizens throughout the years”.

Iran and world powers were set to resume indirect talks in Vienna on Sunday to resurrect Tehran’s tattered 2015 nuclear deal, which granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme. For weeks, Iranian and American diplomats have been negotiating a return to the accord in the Austrian capital through European intermediaries.

Sunday’s talks are the first since the election of Raisi, which will put hardliners firmly in control across Iran’s government.

The landmark nuclear deal between world powers and Iran, which Israel opposed, collapsed after former US president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the accord in 2018. That decision has seen Iran, over time, abandon every limitation on enrichment and Tehran is currently enriching uranium at its highest levels ever, though still short of weapons-grade levels.