Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid speaks during a bilateral meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the State Department in Washington, U.S., October 13, 2021. Andrew Harnik/Pool via REUTERS

JNS.org – Israel is holding contacts with the United States and other world powers in order to influence the nuclear agreement with Iran taking shape and make it as good as possible, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said during a briefing with journalists on Monday.

The report quoted Lapid as saying, “We are not against every agreement,” adding, “We are next to the negotiations table with the powers and we are holding talks on what a good agreement is. There is attention in the world to the Israeli position.”

In a separate report on Monday by Maariv, Lapid was quoted as saying that the Vienna talks began with a sentiment of “let’s get rid of this quickly to get back to other issues,” but “That is not the situation now. This is a central issue on the global table of all leaders.” The foreign minister said that Israel has “to some extent succeeded” in making the world listen to Israel, adding, “We safeguard our freedom of action by not being part of the agreement.”

Talks resumed on Monday between Iran and the p5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) over renewing the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement.