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Israel's ambassador to Washington said in a recent interview that he has been sleeping badly recently.
"What keeps me up at night is the idea that someone could go back to the nuclear deal with Iran," said Ron Dermer on US television.
By “someone” he meant President-elect Joe Biden, who has offered Iran negotiations.
There is hardly an issue that divides Israel and the West as much as the change of power in the USA.
While Europe is counting the days until Trump's departure and celebrating the "return of diplomacy", Israel fears just that: the renewed version of American appeasement against Tehran - and its role as a lonely shouter warning of the Iranian atomic bomb.
A few weeks ago, the Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fachrisadeh was killed in an attack.
Experts attribute it to the Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad.
Observers agree that the action will make future negotiations with Iran difficult, if not impossible.
The EU condemned the "criminal act".
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From the Israeli point of view, the attack was necessary to ensure their own survival.
Even opposition leader Jair Lapid spoke of a “justified killing” and criticized the European kneeling before Iran as “pathetic cowardice”.
Israel's politicians rarely agree, but there is consensus on this point: Iran's nuclear program is an existential threat to the Jewish state.
The Ayatollahs themselves leave no room for doubt.
Ali Khamenei repeats at every opportunity that it is the mission of the Islamic Republic to "wipe Israel off the map".
On this year's "Al-Kuds Day", the religious leader used Nazi vocabulary and spoke of the "final solution".
His followers like to refer to their rocket arsenal with which they would prepare Israel a "Holocaust".
In Brussels, this may be dismissed as rhetoric - Jerusalem takes the threats of the Shiite regime seriously.
Israel is convinced that Tehran is using the civilian use of its nuclear program to secretly build the bomb.
It was recently announced that the secret service was said to have managed to record a phone call from Fachrisadeh years ago.
In it, the scientist should report on his assignment to build five nuclear warheads.
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Once in possession of the bomb, what will the fundamentalist regime do?
Occasionally drawn parallels with the Cold War are wrong.
Unlike the Soviet Union, which placed its survival above ideology, fanatics in Iran have their fingers on the red button.
Israel's own nuclear power, on the other hand, has only a limited deterrent effect because the ayatollahs know that the democratic state shies away from the massive civilian victims of a nuclear strike.
Even Israeli analysts who do not assume Tehran will actually want to use a bomb are deeply concerned.
Because in the course of a military escalation, chain reactions could lead to their ignition.
The very existence of an Iranian atomic bomb could lead to massive upheavals in the Middle East.
Since the beginning of the American withdrawal, Israel and the Sunni Gulf monarchies have been observing what they call the “Iranization of the region”: Tehran is destabilizing the Arab region by supplying terrorists with money and weapons.
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The Israeli Navy regularly intercepts ships that are supposed to smuggle weapons to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
With its extended arm Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, the regime reaches right up to Israel's borders.
The Shiite terrorist militia has directed an estimated 130,000 rockets at Israel.
Security circles believe that the only reason they will not fire them is because they fear retaliatory strikes on Beirut.
An Iranian atomic bomb would give the extremists a protective shield under which they could act even more strongly against Israel.
The nuclear deal that the United States, the United Nations and the EU concluded with Tehran in 2015 was intended to curb its nuclear ambitions.
Iran should shut down its activities and the international community should lift sanctions for it.
International surveillance against more trade, according to the deal orchestrated by Barack Obama and his then Vice-President Joe Biden.
But the agreement does not only have fatal loopholes from an Israeli point of view: it neither mentions Iran's “sponsorship of terrorism” nor its construction of long-range missiles and potential carriers of nuclear warheads.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is only allowed to inspect certain Iranian plants - after 24 days' notice.
In fact, Tehran refused to inspect for a year.
Iran provokes with a new law
The main criticism is the expiration date of the agreement.
Accordingly, restrictions on powerful centrifuges for uranium enrichment will end in three years, and most of the other restrictions will end in ten years.
Then what is stopping Tehran from building the bomb?
The most dangerous dimension of the agreement is not a military one, but a moral one: it gives legitimacy to the Iranian nuclear program.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had convinced Donald Trump to withdraw from the agreement and sanction Iran again.
In a spectacular coup, the Mossad succeeded in stealing tens of thousands of documents from a warehouse in Tehran.
They proved that Iran had built secret underground facilities in the past and, contrary to what was claimed, did research into nuclear weapons.
Europe nevertheless stuck to the agreement.
The latest developments reinforce Israel's stance.
According to the IAEA, Iran has enriched twelve times more uranium than allowed.
Inspectors also found traces of uranium in an undeclared facility.
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Now Tehran is provoking with a law that can be understood as an ultimatum to Biden: If the USA does not relax its actions against Iranian oil companies and banks by February, the inspectors will be expelled and uranium enrichment increased to 20 percent.
After that, it would only be a matter of a few months before the regime had enough material to make an atomic bomb.
Iran’s strategy is clear: if you stick to it, break as many regulations as you can to sell it to the Americans as a great concession.
Israel appeals to Biden not to gamble away the advantages that Trump has given him with his “maximum pressure” strategy.
The Iranian economy is down.
Biden's advisors want to negotiate additional conditions.
Even Germany has now woken up and is pushing for a “nuclear deal plus”.
But that should hardly satisfy Netanyahu.
If he has his way, the essence of the agreement would have to change fundamentally and the expiry date abolished.
More moderate Israeli security forces are calling for the restrictions to be extended by at least 20 years.
In addition, the Iranian missile program and the development of new centrifuges should be restricted, and inspectors should have access to all military installations.
It is already clear that these maximum demands will hardly be enforceable, should Iran even get involved in talks.
A new president will be elected there in June;
Concessions and election campaigns don't go well together.
Israel's security experts are divided into two camps.
One relies on covert missions such as the killing of nuclear scientists and sabotage of nuclear facilities.
The other is of the opinion that this is no longer enough.
Jerusalem must dare a preventive strike, also at the risk of open war breaking out.
Which camp prevails will depend on how far the US and Europe are prepared to meet Tehran.
The West will have to choose between Israel and Iran.