BICOM

What happened: In a briefing to ambassadors of countries on the UN Security Council, Defence Minister Benny Gantz said Iran had increased its production of advanced centrifuges over the past year, more than doubling the number of those centrifuges.
Based on Israeli intelligence, the Iranians have tripled their enrichment capabilities at Fordo, a site that the JCPOA prohibits enrichment at. “Iran currently enriches uranium to a level of 60%, but if it chooses to do so, it can raise the level to 90%,” Gantz said.
The Defence Minister pushed for the UN Security Council to address the issue adding that the international community should “act to prepare an operational, and economic response and prevent a new deal that would not set the Iranians back.”
Iranian activities in Syria have also increased. On Monday, Gantz unveiled a map showing more than ten facilities run by CERS, the Syrian military industries, claiming that those facilities were manufacturing advanced weapons for Iran and its proxies.
Gantz accused Iran of arming its proxies at a cost of more than a billion dollars annually and estimated that lifting sanctions would “release more than USD 100 billion, and without doubt, this will let them double or triple their terror budget.”
Speaking at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at Reichman University in Herzliya, Mossad Director David Barnea said that a return to the JCPOA would be a mistake. “The agreement will actually bring Iran closer to realising its nuclear program,” Barnea warned. “It is beneficial in the short run, but bad in the long run.”
Barnea reiterated that Israel would not be bound by any agreement. “Even if a nuclear agreement is signed, it won’t buy Iran immunity from Mossad operations…The Mossad and its partners will continue to expose and will continue to unmask everyone who is behind terror attacks, and the Iranian regime won’t have any room for immunity.” The Mossad Director also confirmed that his organisation had foiled dozens of planned Iranian terror attacks overseas, including in Cyprus and Turkey.

Context: Despite pushing for an agreement, the US and the E3 (the UK, France and Germany) are increasingly pessimistic about the chances for a renewal of the JCPOA with Iran.
During a news conference in Mexico, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised doubt over Iran’s willingness to reach such a deal. “Iran seems either unwilling or unable to do what’s necessary to reach an agreement and they continue to try to introduce extraneous issues to the negotiations that make an agreement less likely”, Blinken said. “What we’ve seen over the last week or so in Iran’s response to the proposal put forward by the European Union is clearly a step backward and makes prospects for an agreement in the near-term, I would say, unlikely” he added. Blinken warned that Washington was “not about to agree to a deal that doesn’t meet our bottom-line requirements.”
Blinken’s comments follow a statement over the weekend by Britain, France and Germany who said they had “serious doubts” about Iran’s intentions after it tried to link a revival of the JCPOA with a closure of U.N. watchdog probes into uranium traces at three of its nuclear sites. “Iran’s position contradicts its legally binding obligations and jeopardises prospects of restoring the JCPOA,” the statement read. Tehran responded that the European statement was “unconstructive”.

Looking ahead: The largest remaining issue for negotiations is a disagreement over the continuation of a probe into Iran’s nuclear activities.
The IAEA is yet to receive sufficient explanation for traces of old nuclear particles found at several Iranian sites. Iran demands that the probe be closed.
Israeli officials believe that no further negotiation progress will be made before the US midterms in November.