Former Israeli ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer excoriated Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid for their lack of efforts in trying to thwart the Biden administration from signing a nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic and releasing billions of dollars to the mullahs, Yisrael Hayom reported on Sunday.

Speaking on a podcast for JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, Dermer said: “Israel has been virtually silent on the Iran issue. If the government had been pointing out the dangers inherent in the deal, over and over again, this would have led to more and more Congressional members from both parties opposing it. Furthermore, if we had pushed our Arab partners to express themselves in opposition to the deal, this would have conveyed a critical message and led the administration to conclude that ‘it’s not worth it.'”

Dermer also pointed out that unlike in 2015, when then-President Barack Obama claimed that the deal was favorable to Israel, the Biden administration is not even trying to make such a claim, a fact that Bennett and Lapid failed to take highlight and take advantage of.

“Bennett and Lapid published a joint announcement on the issue, but Israel has not made this [Iran] a central issue and has not launched a campaign,” Dermer said. “As someone who served in Washington, I can tell you that there are ways of doing this. I would have given dozens of interviews, held meetings with Congressmen, and made sure they were broadcast on social media, television, all the main channels such as CNN, MSNBC, NPR… all the channels that the Democrats listen to.”

“They should also have held meetings with Arab leaders,” Dermer continued. “They held that Negev Summit, but they should have held a joint interview with an Arab foreign minister on the topic of Iran. Democrats across the country and on Capitol Hill would have watched such an interview. That’s how a campaign should be conducted.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)