US official: Israel essential to development of nuke deal

Wendy Sherman also tells Israeli reporters that Jerusalem was in constant contact with the world powers’ negotiating team, and its input was “essential.”

“We have had extraordinarily close consultation with Israel,” she says. “Experts from Israel have been essential in the development of this deal. In fact, one of your lead experts wrote an email to us after the deal looking for further consultations to see where our joint efforts produced a result. So it was everything from the redesign of the Arak reactor, which your Israeli colleagues helped to critique and to help us refine to looking at issues of weaponization that ended up being in this deal.”