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Israel's Bennett Warns Against Nuclear Talks with Iran's ‘Hangmen Regime’


Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett chairs the first weekly Cabinet meeting of the new government in Jerusalem, June 20, 2021.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett chairs the first weekly Cabinet meeting of the new government in Jerusalem, June 20, 2021.

Israel condemned on Sunday the election of hardline judge Ebrahim Raisi as Iranian president, saying his would be a "regime of brutal hangmen" with which world powers should not negotiate a new nuclear deal.

Raisi, who is under U.S. sanctions for human rights abuses, secured victory as expected on Saturday in Iran's presidential election after a contest marked by voter apathy over economic hardships and political restrictions.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, convening his first televised Cabinet session since taking office last week, described Raisi's ascent as enabled by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rather than by a free and popular vote.

"Raisi's election is, I would say, the last chance for world powers to wake up before returning to the nuclear agreement, and understand who they are doing business with," said Bennett in a statement he read out first in Hebrew and then in English.

"A regime of brutal hangmen must never be allowed to have weapons of mass-destruction," he said. "Israel's position will not change on this."

Raisi has never publicly addressed allegations around his role in what Washington and rights groups have called the extrajudicial executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.

Bennett, a nationalist atop of a cross-partisan coalition, has hewed to the opposition of his conservative predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, to the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, whose caps on projects with bomb-making potential Israel deemed too lax.

The former U.S. administration of Donald Trump agreed with Israel and quit the deal. Current President Joe Biden wants a U.S. return to the deal. Iran denies seeking nuclear weaponry.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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