JUST...BREATHE

Israeli Officials Urging Calm With Iran After Alleged Cargo Ship Bombings: Report

If Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal later abandoned by Trump has any chance of being resurrected, flaring tensions certainly won’t help, say security chiefs.

Top Israeli security officials are reportedly urging the Netanyahu administration to calm tensions with Iran after attacks on both Israeli and Iranian cargo ships that each nation has blamed on one another, according to the Times of Israel.

Iran was behind a late February attack on the MV Helios Ray, an Israeli-owned cargo ship, Israeli PM Benjamin Natanyahu recently said. On March 14, an Iranian investigator fired back, alleging Israel was responsible for an attack on an Iranian cargo ship last week in the Mediterranean, the news outlet reported.

The impetus behind a deescalation would reportedly give the Biden administration time to find its footing with regard to resurrecting the 2015 nuclear deal, which the Trump administration abandoned wholesale in 2018. Talk of a detente comes days after the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel has bombed at least a dozen Iranian ships in a sustained campaign that began in late 2019.