Never, to the best of our knowledge, has an incumbent Mossad chief publicly issued such a pronouncement, but on Nov. 2, the spy agency’s director David Barnea pledged that Iran would never have nuclear weapons. “It’s clear that there’s no need for uranium enriched to 60% for civilian purposes,” he said at a ceremony honoring outstanding Mossad agents. “There’s no need for three enrichment sites. There’s no need for thousands of active centrifuges — unless, that is, there is an intention to develop nuclear weapons. … Iran will not have nuclear weapons — not in the coming years, not ever. That is my promise, that is Mossad’s promise.”

Barnea leaves next week for talks in the United States against the backdrop of growing US-Israeli tensions over the Iranian nuclear issue. The Americans, according to a front-page Nov. 3 headline in the mass circulation Yedioth Ahronoth, are demanding that Israel freeze all clandestine and intelligence activity designed to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program during the ongoing Vienna negotiations so as to avoid undermining the talks with Tehran. Israel, claims the report, is refusing to commit itself.

Meanwhile, Barnea’s declaration is drawing quite a bit of criticism, in Israel, too. “The only one who can make such a commitment is the United States,” a senior Israeli source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “Only a world power of the stature of the United States has the ability to make such a promise.” However, the United States has already issued such pledges publicly many times, and no one in Israel believes them any longer.

Barnea’s statement came on the heels of dramatic pronouncements by Israel’s top leaders — Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman and President Isaac Herzog — on the Nov. 29 opening day of the Vienna talks. Defense Minister Benny Gantz also addressed the issue this week, saying, “The military option must always be on the table. It is, of course, the last thing we want to use but we do not have the right to not prepare that option for ourselves.” Bennett, for his part, spoke Dec. 1 with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, urging the powers yet again not to surrender to Iran’s “nuclear blackmail.”