One week until deadline for nuclear talks with Iran - The survival of Israel is non-negotiable!

Negotiations Lausanne April 2015

Helsinki, June 23rd, 2015 - As nuclear talks enter their final week before the proposed deadline of June 30th, the European Coalition for Israel has called on the negotiating team of the G5+1 (The US, UK, France, Russia, Germany and China) to stand firm to ensure that Iran is not able to develop nuclear weapons.

’There can be no further talks with Iran before its leadership recognises the right of the State of Israel to exist and commits to living in peace with all its neighbours’, ECI DirectorTomas Sandell said in a statement in Helsinki on Monday. ’Refusing to recognise another UN member state, in this case Israel, and threatening to exterminate it, is in clear violation of the UN Charter, the 70th Anniversary of which will be commemorated in San Francisco on June 26th.

The leaders of Iran have consistently called for the destruction of the Jewish state while at the same time denying the Holocaust. The vow to ”wipe Israel off the map” was recently declared as a ”non-negotiable” by the Iranian leaders, although this statement has largely been ignored by the negotiating team of the G5+1, who have dismissed the issue as ”not being part of the agenda for the nuclear talks.”

’As long as the objective to annihilate Israel is on the agenda for Iran, the G5+1 should not return to the negotiating table, but keep the sanctions in place’, Sandell said.

’Iran is the main sponsor of international terrorism in the Middle East and should not be rewarded with nuclear capabilities. A nuclear Iran will not bring peace and stability to the region but will further destabilise it and initiate a new nuclear arms race’, he warned.

’The international community needs to keep up the pressure on Iran until a good deal can be achieved’, he continued. ’The EU has a historic commitment not to let down the Jewish people when they are faced with an existential threat. History teaches us that we cannot give in to a regime which is obsessed with the annihilation of the Jews’, Sandell said.

’It is alarming that at the same time as the EU discusses the lifting of sanctions on Iran, European leaders are planning new measures to sanction Israel by starting to label goods produced in the disputed territories.

The EU and the international community is now faced with a moral choice, either to stand up for democracy and the rule of law, or to give in to a rogue regime that persecutes its own people and sponsors international terrorism’, Sandell warned.

The European Coalition for Israel opposes a nuclear deal that would threaten the very survival of the State of Israel. The survival of Israel is non-negotiable.