Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz attends a cabinet meeting of the new government, at the Chagall Hall in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, May 24, 2020. Photo: Abir Sultan / Pool via Reuters / File.

i24 News – Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz told diplomats from countries on the United Nations Security Council Wednesday that Iran is as few as “10 weeks away from acquiring weapons-grade materials necessary for a nuclear weapon.”

Gantz insisted that the Islamic republic was increasingly emboldened in its actions across the region, including the recent attacks on maritime vessels in the Gulf of Oman, a sentiment that Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who was also at the meeting, reiterated, labeling the UAV strikes as a “matter for the international community.”

“Now is the time for deeds — words are not enough. It is time for diplomatic, economic, and even military deeds — otherwise the attacks will continue,” Gantz maintained.

Warming to his task, Gantz declared that Iran was in breach of the guidelines set in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the so-called Iran nuclear deal signed with former president Barack Obama in 2015.

The senior Israeli cabinet members wished to draw the ambassadors’ attention to the precise nature of the Iranian threat and not only from the perspective of the existential challenge that a nuclear Iran would pose to the Jewish state.

Gantz said that Israel had and would continue to share incriminating evidence of Iran’s activity with the international community, but that it retained the ability to act alone if there were threats to its sovereignty or its citizens.