President Joe Biden on Wednesday opened his first visit to the Mideast since taking office by offering anxious Israeli leaders strong reassurances of his determination to stop Iran's growing nuclear program, saying he'd be willing to use force as a “last resort.”
Published Wednesday, July 13, 2022 9:36PM EDT
“We will discuss the need to renew a strong global coalition that will stop the Iranian nuclear program,” saidi Prime Minister Yair Lapid, as he greeted the Democratic president at the airport ceremony in Tel Aviv. Iran insists its program is for peaceful purposes, though United Nations experts and Western intelligence agencies say Iran had an organized military nuclear program through 2003.follows the collapse of a coalition-led government headed by Naftali Bennett. The president was greeted by Lapid, the caretaker prime minister who is hoping to hang on to power whenLapid reminded Biden of when they first met roughly eight years earlier. Biden was vice president and Lapid was finance minister.
“There are those who thought with the last administration we sort of walked away from the Middle East, that we were going to create a vacuum that China and or Russia would fill, and we can't let that happen,” he said. “Did you see the president hug me?” she asked “He asked permission to kiss me and he kept on holding my hand and we were told not to touch him.”i officials, including Lapid, Herzog and opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He'll meet Friday Friday with Palestinian officials.i and Palestinian leaders his continued support for a two-state solution to thei-Palestinian conflict, but acknowledged that outcome likely wouldn't be feasible “in the near term.
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