Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign policy adviser Ophir Falk on Wednesday expressed deep skepticism about Iran’s willingness to negotiate an end to the war.
“Well, Iran always lies. We’ve learned that they always lie," Falk said in an interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto, when asked why Israel doubts Tehran’s intentions.
Falk stressed that Israel’s primary goal was to “remove the existential threat posed by this ayatollah regime."
He described three potential paths to Israel’s goal: removing the regime itself, severely weakening Iran’s military capabilities, or pursuing diplomacy.
“The best way of doing that is to remove the regime," he told CNN. “Another way … is to decimate their military capabilities until they get to the stone age… more or less a third way … is by negotiations."
Falk emphasized that Israel does not see these options as mutually exclusive, saying, “To the contrary, we can do all three at once, and that’s what we’re doing now."
On Monday, US President Donald Trump announced a five-day pause on “any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure" to allow diplomatic negotiations between Tehran and Washington, adding that the US is reaching out to “very solid" figures inside Iran.
Subsequent reports indicated that Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was representing Iran in the talks with the US, but Ghalibaf denied that any talks were taking place at all.
On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that the US sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war in the Middle East.
On Wednesday, Iran signaled that it rejects the plan proposed by the US. According to reports in Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, Tehran has returned to insisting on baseline conditions that Washington had previously rejected outright, even before the outbreak of the war.