Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs, Yuval Steinitz, is heading to Washington with a delegation of top Israeli nuclear and defense experts in advance of the July 20 deadline in talks with Iran.

Israel fears the Americans will back down from demands that Iran comply with multiple United Nations sanctions. The U.N. has repeatedly called on the Islamic Republic to halt the enrichment of uranium that the International Atomic Energy Agency and the international community suspects is being used to produce nuclear weapons.

For several years, the IAEA has reported that Iran’s refusal to cooperate with the international watchdog agency meant it could not determine if the Iran nuclear program was for “peaceful purposes,” as the Iranians claimed. The IAEA stated that it “possesses evidence that Tehran has conducted work on a highly sophisticated nuclear triggering technology that experts said could be used for only one purpose: setting off a nuclear weapon.”

Israel is demanding that any nuclear deal with Iran be similar to the chemical weapons deals reached with Syria and Libya, Yisrael Hayom reported. That is to say that Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities must be dismantled, not just supervised.

Talks between Iran and the international community are set to resume July 2, with the Iranians stubbornly refusing to allow the IAEA access to its secret nuclear military installation at Parchin. Expectations are that despite the July 20 deadline, the Iranians will once again succeed in extending talks while their centrifuges continue to spin and produced enriched nuclear fuel.

[Photo: Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs, Yuval Steinitz. TIP Photo by David Katz]