The opportunity for negotiations with Iran over the next two weeks is “highly unlikely” as it is in “no position to present any demands,” Ido Aharoni, a former Israeli consul general in New York, told Newsmax Friday.
Aharoni’s comments, on Newsmax’s “National Report,” come after President Donald Trump on Thursday said that he will decide within two weeks on whether the U.S. military will become directly involved in the increasing hostilities between Israel and Iran.
Trump also said there is a “substantial chance” for new negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program.
“Iran is in no position to present any demands,” Aharoni said. “Their demand that they will never accept a zero enrichment as a goal is unacceptable by Israel, and I’m sure also by President Trump and his administration.”
But Iran, he said, is “behaving and acting and projecting as if they have no maneuverability, as if they have any position of power, but they really don’t.”
Iran has also threatened to attack American targets in the region, but “I think they understand very well what the implications of such an attack would be on the fate of their regime,” Aharoni added.
Meanwhile, he noted that with Israel and Iran both carrying out airstrikes, the “big difference” in the two is that “Israel’s attacks are surgical.”
“They have a purpose. They are linked to the operational goals of the entire war, which are related to Iran’s nuclear program, but also to Iran’s conventional capabilities, meaning ballistic missiles,” Aharoni said.
An Iranian missile attack this week on southern Israel’s main hospital and several residential buildings that left hundreds of people in the area injured could have been worse, he added.
There were no serious injuries in the strike on the Soroka Medical Center in the southern city of Beersheba, as it was evacuated the day before the attack, said Aharoni.
“Thank God the building was empty,” he said. “But it was evacuated the day before the attack. But they hit a building where hundreds of patients used to be only 24 hours earlier.”
Still, “this kind of low-intensity conflict serves Iran better than it does serve Israel,” he said. “I think that is clear” .
