Israel expects the Trump administration to take a strong stance against Iran and its nuclear ambitions, thus potentially creating an opportunity for additional peace agreements with Arab neighbors, Energy Minister Eli Cohen (Likud) told Reuters on Thursday.
Cohen noted that President-elect Donald Trump’s appointees are poised to support a strong policy against Iran.
"The period of Trump’s previous administration was characterized by greater regional stability," he said. "Towards the end of his presidency, the sanctions on Iran were close to making Iran change its behavior on the nuclear issue."
"We certainly hope and believe that the Trump administration's policy will continue that, and first and foremost, we see the most central issue is acting assertively against Iran," he added.
"We think he (Trump) is targeting the bottom line—to rein in the threatening actors and create new regional alliances that are very important," Cohen stated.
During Trump’s previous term, there were tensions between Iran and the US. In 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, denouncing it as a “horrible one-sided deal.” He subsequently imposed severe economic sanctions on Iran.
The Islamic Republic, in turn, scaled back its compliance with the terms of the 2015 agreement.
The Biden administration tried, unsuccessfully, to revive the deal. The negotiations reached a stalemate in September of 2023, after Iran submitted an unsatisfactory response to a European Union proposal to revive the deal.