By LAURIE KELLMAN Associated Press
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JERUSALEM — Israel’s prime minister urged President Joe Biden and Western powers to call off an emerging nuclear deal with Iran, saying that negotiators are letting Tehran manipulate the talks and that an agreement would reward Israel’s enemies.

Yair Lapid called the emerging agreement a “bad deal” and suggested that Biden has failed to honor red lines he had previously promised to set.

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“The countries of the West draw a red line, the Iranians ignore it, and the red line moves,” Lapid told reporters at a press conference in Jerusalem. An emerging deal, Lapid said, “does not meet the standards set by President Biden himself: preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear state.”

Biden has been eager to revive the 2015 deal, which offered sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program. The original deal unraveled after then-President Donald Trump withdrew from it in 2018 and reimposed sanctions, with strong encouragement from Israel.

It remains unclear whether the United States and Iran will be able to reach a new agreement. But the Biden administration is expected to weigh in on Iran’s latest offer in the coming days. With an agreement appearing close, Israel has stepped up its efforts to block it. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, though U.N. experts and Western intelligence agencies say Iran had an organized military nuclear program through 2003.

Nonproliferation experts warn Iran has enriched enough uranium up to 60% purity — a short technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90% — to make one nuclear weapon. However, Iran still would need to design a bomb and a delivery system for it, likely a monthslong project.

Israel is widely believed to have acquired nuclear weapons decades ago, something it has neither confirmed nor denied in keeping with a policy of nuclear ambiguity.

Tehran has increasingly claimed that the Americans are now delaying the deal, even though Iran spent months in back-and-forth negotiations that previously stalled in both Vienna and Qatar.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said it has begun a “precise review ” of the U.S. response to a European proposal and would submit its own response to the Europeans, Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported Wednesday.