There is strong concern in Israel that President Joe Biden will return to the Iranian Nuclear Deal that he helped to create while he was Vice President in 2015. Iran has long declared that President Trumps’ abandonment of the deal was illegal and only increased tension in the region. Iran is now pushing for President Biden to return to the deal and remove sanctions against their nation.

However, a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, or a “slightly improved” one, would be an operational and strategic mistake for the world, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi said recently. “If Iran’s progress in developing advanced centrifuges and enriching uranium is not stopped, it could eventually be “only weeks” away from a nuclear bomb.

The Iran deal would still allow the Islamic Republic to break out to a nuclear weapon in 2030 when the agreement expires”, he said at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) annual conference. “The US and others must maintain all sanctions and pressure because Tehran is at its weakest and closest to making real concessions,” he added.

Kochavi said he had ordered operational plans to strike Iran’s nuclear program to be ready if necessary, but whether to use those plans and under what circumstances was a decision for the political echelon. Israel’s strikes in Syria and other undefined parts of the Middle East had created the greatest deterrence Israel has ever known against its enemies. The IDF had tremendous success in blocking or slowing Iran from transporting advanced weapons into Syria, but it could never let its guard down. Moreover, the normalization trend is isolating Iran in ways that it never expected and was not prepared for, declared Kochavi.

Regarding other challenges, Kochavi warned Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, saying in the event of a war, Israel would strike every house that holds weapons “with a deluge of strikes. “These “terrorist armies” have decided to conceal their weapons in civilian areas on purpose and in every fifth house in Lebanon”, he said, adding that all civilians in those areas must immediately evacuate as soon as a war starts because Israel will not give the terrorists immunity just because that is where they are hiding.

“We will follow international law,” he said. “We will warn them in Lebanon and Gaza to let them leave. I already warned you in Lebanon and Gaza: Once war starts, we will let you leave the places you are in, the places you are in have missiles, and you know this.”

New cutting-edge intelligence and technological capabilities that help the IDF uncover hidden weapons with unprecedented accuracy would help destroy enemy rockets and avoid civilian deaths, Kochavi said.

“The pace for gathering targets is much faster than ever,” he said, adding that more than 200 officers are dedicated to the sole purpose of vetting selected targets “to help get to a much more decisive point” in battling our enemies. Kochavi cited the IDF’s targeted killing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) commander Baha Abu al-Ata and responding to every rocket by hitting targets of significant value to Hamas and PIJ.

On a related note, Israel is under constant cyber threat from a range of radical Islamists, Kochavi said. To meet this challenge, the IDF “significantly increased its cyberattack capabilities and operations” this past year. Recently, Israel has also signed normalization agreements with four Arab countries, agreements that strengthen Israel within the region.

PRAY: Pray for wisdom for both Israel and the United States as to how they move forward in dealing with Iran’s desire to become a nuclear power.