Israel fears Iran intends to use the 60-day nuclear negotiating period at the heart of its emerging deal with the United States as cover to push its program closer to a weapon, Channel 12 reported Tuesday, citing senior Israeli officials.

The window is a central feature of the memorandum of understanding signed electronically this week and set for formal signing in Switzerland on Friday. It opens a 60-day track for talks on Iran’s nuclear activities, monitoring, and the disposition of its enriched uranium. Israeli officials, according to the report, believe Tehran has no intention of letting those talks reach a genuine resolution.

Israel assesses that Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, approved the memorandum not to close out his country’s nuclear ambitions but to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and unlock economic relief for a regime battered by more than three months of war, the network reported. In that reading, the nuclear negotiations are a price Tehran is willing to appear to pay, not a commitment it means to honor.

Defense officials reportedly warned the government that Iran will drag out the process and that the 60 days will stretch into something far longer. One senior official told Channel 12 it would be surprising if Tehran did not deploy every effort and trick at its disposal to shorten its path to a nuclear breakout under the cover of talks.

The fear is grounded in where Iran’s program already stands. Before the war, the country was believed to hold roughly 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, a level short of the 90 percent needed for weapons-grade material but close enough that the final leap can be made quickly. The handling of that stockpile is precisely the kind of issue meant to be resolved in the 60-day talks, and Israeli officials worry it could instead be advanced during them. Iran has insisted for years that its program is for civilian purposes and that it does not seek a bomb.

Compounding Israeli unease is the man now atop the Iranian system. Mojtaba Khamenei, a hardline cleric long seen as the power behind his father’s throne, was elevated to supreme leader in March after Ali Khamenei was killed in an Israeli strike on the war’s opening day. In his first messages he vowed vengeance against the United States and Israel and pressed for keeping Hormuz closed as leverage. Israeli officials see little in his record to suggest a leader inclined to bargain away the nuclear capability his father spent decades building.

The Channel 12 report sharpens a critique already coursing through Israel’s political class. Opposition figures including former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Democrats leader Yair Golan, and Yisrael Beytenu’s Avigdor Liberman have assailed the deal as leaving Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and ballistic missiles largely intact while channeling economic relief to Tehran. The reported assessment from defense officials lends an operational edge to that argument, casting the agreement’s signature provision not as a brake on Iran’s program but as a runway.

President Donald Trump has sought to preempt exactly this scenario, warning of unspecified ultimate consequences if Iran moves toward a weapon in defiance of the deal. Whether that threat deters a regime Israeli officials believe is already planning to run out the clock is the question now hanging over Friday’s signing.

If the Israeli assessment is right, the document the world will watch the two sides sign in Switzerland buys Iran something more valuable than peace. It buys time, and time is the one ingredient a nuclear program most needs.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)