TEHRAN - A key rival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized his hawkish stance on Iran’s nuclear program on Saturday, making the issue a central theme for parliamentary elections expected this year, Reuters reported.  

 

“It’s a most serious mistake to turn the issue of… Iran into Israel’s biggest problem,” Shelly Yachimovich said in a televised interview.

 

Yachimovich backs Washington’s position that there is still time to see if diplomacy can help resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear issue. 

 

The main bone of contention between Tehran and the West is Iran’s uranium enrichment program. 

 

Iran says all its nuclear activities are totally peaceful, and, as an International Atomic Energy Agency member and a nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signatory, it has the legal right to produce nuclear fuel for its research reactors and nuclear power plants.

 

Tehran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) held a new round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program in Istanbul on April 14, breaking a 15-month hiatus in talks, and agreed to meet again in Baghdad on May 23.