JERUSALEM, December 22 (Reuters) – The United States and Israel are at a “critical moment” on various security issues and should develop a common strategy, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told the Israeli Prime Minister on Wednesday Naftali Bennett in Jerusalem.

Sullivan’s 30-hour visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories days before Christmas, amid new global concerns over the coronavirus pandemic, suggested the urgency of Washington’s desire to strengthen a long-standing alliance.

Bennett tweeted that the “productive” talks included the “growing threat posed by Iran and its negotiations with world powers.”

Washington spearheaded efforts in Vienna to renew a 2015 deal in which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. Israel fiercely opposed the pact, and President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of it.

“What is happening in Vienna has profound ramifications for Middle Eastern stability and Israel’s security for years to come,” Bennett told Sullivan, according to his office.

Since Trump withdrew, Iran has broken the pact with advances in sensitive areas such as uranium enrichment, while denying any military plans.

Sullivan said President Joe Biden sent it “because at a critical time for our two countries on a major set of security issues, it’s important that we sit down and develop a common strategy, a common perspective.” .

Israel has long hinted that, if it believed diplomacy was at an impasse, it might resort to preemptive strikes to deprive its nemesis of the means to make a bomb.

The bestselling Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth asked the new Air Force chief Major-General Tomer Bar if his corps was ready to attack Iran “tomorrow”, if necessary. He replied, “Yes.”

Sullivan was due to travel to the occupied West Bank to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose negotiations to create a US-sponsored state with Israel have stalled since 2014.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz tweeted that he had informed Sullivan of ongoing “confidence building measures” with the Abbas administration.

He made no mention of Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank, which the Biden administration rebuked as detrimental to the prospects for peace. Read more

Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Kevin Liffey

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