The European Union’s top negotiator at the Iran nuclear deal talks in Vienna was optimistic Sunday that Tehran is set to return to the 2015 nuclear agreement.

According to Enrique Mora, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, the text of an agreement “could be closed in the coming hours”.

So far this has not happened, but it still could.

What did happen in the hours after that report was published, was that Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) agreed to a ceasefire, which went into effect a little more than 48 hours after the IDF launched “Break of Dawn” in Gaza.

During the military operation, the PIJ launched 1,100 rockets against Israel, 200 of which reportedly landed in Gaza, killing 15 Palestinian civilians. 380 rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome defence system while 610 others landed in the sea or harmlessly in open spaces. Over 100 Israeli buildings were damaged.

Israeli airstrikes shredded the PIJ’s top leaders in the north and south of the strip, and struck over 100 terrorist targets. In total, 35 deaths were reported by the Arab authorities in Gaza, of which, they claimed, 26 were “innocent bystanders”.

Throughout the operation, the PIJ’s number 1 leader, Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhala was safely out of harm’s way – in Tehran.

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden has welcomed the ceasefire and stressed that “My support for Israel’s security is long-standing and unwavering—including its right to defend itself against attacks.” He lauded American support the Iron Dome which over the weekend “intercepted hundreds of rockets and saved countless lives”.

The situation is quite bizarre: On the one hand, Biden is slapping his country on the back for supporting the development of the Iron Dome, which the US in March committed to resupplying to the tune of a billion dollars. (Each interceptor fired from the system costs up to $100K to replace.)

On the other, the US is close – some say it is imminent – to getting Iran back to the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement, which will see the primary exporter of terror – through the PIJ, Hamas, Hizb’Allah and the Houthis, et all, freed up from the sanctions and able to rake in the billions of dollars its crude oil stockpiles are just waiting to exploit in our suddenly fuel-deprived world.

Some of this money will de facto get back to the PIJ, which it will help to rebuild.

A number of Israelis sought, over the weekend, to draw attention to this anomaly.

Speaking on Fox News, former prime minister, now opposition leader, Binyamin Netanyahu stated unequivocally that the PIJ “is guided by Iran; they ae a wholly-owned subsidiary of Iran.”

His words were echoed by former deputy commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division, Brig.Gen. (res) Amir Avivi in an interview: “The current escalation between Israel and the PIJ is the result of Iranian orders. … As we speak, the PIJ leader, Ziyad al-Nakhala, is in Tehran, meeting the Iranian president and the IRGC commander. PIJ is an absolute proxy of Iran.”

Journalist and strategy analyst Caroline Glick tweeted:

Islamic Jihad=Iran
Hamas=Iran
Hezbollah=Iran
This is not about Israel and some tin pot terror group. It is about Israel and Iran — which the Biden administration is now negotiating a deal with in Vienna that will give Iran hundreds of billions of dollars and nuclear weapons. — Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick)

Iran’s nuclear program threatens Israel and the Sunni Arab Middle East and, with its already developed long-range missile delivery systems, also menaces Europe and even the US.

Its mullahs are ideologically bound to destroying Israel. And its religion – of which its politics is a seamless extension – binds that country to the eventual destruction of infidel Europe and the Christian United States.

Israel’s leadership, going all the way back to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, has gone to extraordinary lengths to try and alert the West to the mortal dangers posed by Shia Iran – even going as far as to defy the president of the United States in order to ensure that the warning is heard.

That act of defiance fell largely on deaf ears, but Israel paid for it: It dislodged Washington from its traditional position of standing up for the Jewish state in the Security Council – the defied president holding Israel’s gaze as he stood aside and enabled the UNSC to declare Israel’s presence in Samaria and Judea illegal, and to label those areas “occupied Palestinian lands” – which they demonstrably are not.

And Israel manifestly failed to dissuade the US from resuming negotiations with Iran.

After signing the JCPOA agreement in 2015, Iran stood to win $100 billion.

Thanks also to the global fuel crisis caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine, Iran with its stockpiles of hundreds of millions of barrels of oil, will benefit substantially more today.

And guess who wants that oil? The United States, which ended its Russian oil imports. And the EU, which is trying to wriggle out of its dependency on Moscow.

The price for crude is at its highest level in more than 10 years. Iran and the terror groups it bankrolls cannot wait to get their hands on that money.