RIYADH: Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, sees a renewed nuclear agreement between the US and Iran as the only realistic way to defuse one of the Middle East’s most dangerous flashpoints. Diplomacy, not military force, he said, offers the best chance of curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
Appearing on the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking,” Olmert made the case for a deal at a moment of regional volatility, with a tenuous ceasefire holding in the war with Iran and diplomatic efforts largely stalled.
In his view, an agreement that limits uranium enrichment, bars any military dimension to Iran’s nuclear program and restores strict international inspections would amount to a strategic win for Israel, whether its current government welcomes it or not.
“I think that the only possible way (forward) is a new agreement on nuclear issues between America and Iran,” he said. “If there will be an agreement between Iran and America, whether Israel likes it or not, the government of Israel will have to (fall in line).”
Olmert pointed to the 2015 nuclear agreement reached under the former US president, Barack Obama, which capped Iran’s enrichment at 3.67 percent, significantly below the enrichment level needed to create a bomb.
Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, told Frankly Speaking he sees a renewed nuclear agreement between the US and Iran as the only realistic way to defuse one of the Middle East’s most dangerous flashpoints. (AN Photo)
“America withdrew from this agreement,” Olmert told “Frankly Speaking” host Katie Jensen. “So, I think that Iran already agreed to an agreement limiting its activities in the nuclear program — limited entirely (to nonmilitary activity.) And I think that it’s open now for a similar agreement.”
For Olmert, the central question is whether US President Donald Trump is willing to pursue such a path. He dismissed military action as an effective alternative. “But what are his options? I don’t see that a military operation can make a dramatic change,” he said.
Even if US and Israeli leaders define victory differently, Olmert argued that a credible agreement would still serve Israel’s core security interests.
“I’m not certain that what I think is the win is necessarily what the American president or the Israeli prime minister will define as such,” he said, adding that a deal that ends Iran’s enrichment activities, halts any nuclear weapons program and places its nuclear work under close supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency would remove the immediate threat of an Iranian nuclear capability.
“I think that this will be definitely a victory for what Israel as a state wants as the main objective of our security concern for years.”
Iran’s regime may be open to talks on ending the war, but not yet to a broader nuclear accord. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said on Saturday that Tehran had received messages from the Trump administration indicating openness to new negotiations. But he said a “deadlock” remained over Iran’s enriched nuclear material.
While Olmert described the opening US-Israeli strike on Iran as “quite impressive,” he repeatedly questioned the strategy and endgame of the US military offensive, Operation Epic Fury, and Israel’s Operation Lion’s Roar.
A woman walks past an anti-Israel mural in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 17, 2026. (AP)
“The outcome of that strike was significant … the (liquidation) of the leadership of Iran, Ayatollah (Ali Khamenei) and some senior commanders in the army,” he said.
On Feb. 28, the US and Israel launched joint strikes in Iran, killing top leaders, including Supreme Leader Khamenei, and inflicting heavy damage on Iran’s military assets.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles and drones at Israel and Arab neighbors, notably the Gulf states. It also announced restrictions on marine navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes.
For Olmert, however, the initial success of the strikes did not answer the larger political question. “What’s the endgame?” he asked. “What’s the next step, where are we aiming it, what is the objective? And I think time has passed and I still ask the same question.
“Seems to me that the stalemate or the ceasefire … remains more the same,” he said. “There is no movement. There is no end to the military (conflict), but there is no movement toward a solution. So, we are stuck.”
Asked whether the US-Israeli offensive lacked a coherent strategy from the outset, Olmert said he could not recall “any clear definition of the political objective” beyond the military campaign itself. Early talk of regime change, he said, quickly faded once it became clear that no such outcome was imminent.
“At the beginning, they were talking about a regime change, but I think quite soon afterwards it became apparent that a regime change is not going to take place,” he said. “It seems to have been forgotten.
“So, I don’t know if there was any specific objective other than, of course, what President Trump keeps saying all the time — that Iran should not have nuclear (weapons), and that consequently Iran perhaps should release the 450 kilograms of enriched uranium and give it to America or to a third party.”
Despite a ceasefire since April 8, naval clashes have continued in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has repeatedly said he would accept nothing short of a full surrender and a permanent end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But on Friday, he said a 20-year moratorium on Iran’s nuclear program could be enough to secure a deal.
Olmert’s support for the current strikes is a shift from his earlier position. In 2012, he opposed an Israeli attack on Iran, and he said the distinction now is US involvement.
“I didn’t support an Israeli strike in 2008 and since then. And, if asked on February 27, am I in support of a single Israeli military strike without the US, I probably would have said the same,” he said. “The difference is that this was not just an Israeli strike.
“Israel didn’t have a real option of destroying … the underground nuclear sites of Iran. And, therefore, I was against an Israeli operation had it not been successful in destroying the nuclear sites.
“America does have the bombs and the weapons and the planes that can carry the bombs that could take the nuclear sites in Fordow … so, the question now is, can we destroy the nuclear sites?” Olmert said. “The only way to do it is to (turn) to America. And America doesn’t seem to be able to do it now. So, therefore it changes the situation.”
He was more cautious when asked about Benjamin Netanyahu’s role in pushing Trump toward war.
Media reports, including in the New York Times, have suggested the Israeli prime minister played a major part in steering the US president toward military action. Olmert said he had no direct information to confirm that, although he had no doubt Netanyahu strongly favored a strike.
A Palestinian boy inspects the site of an Israeli strike in the Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City on May 15, 2026. Israel said on May 15 that it carried out a strike in Gaza targeting Ezzedine Al-Haddad. (AFP)
“I’m not familiar with any specific intelligence or information that I can provide you,” he said. “So, I don’t know.”
“I’m sure that he may have talked to President Trump,” Olmert said. But whether Netanyahu alone shifted Trump’s position, “I don’t know. I would be careful to pass an opinion about it,” he said. “Certainly, Netanyahu was in favor, but had he been powerful enough to force Trump to move from where he was into giving orders to the American army to attack? That, I don’t know.”
From Iran, the conversation turned to Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where Olmert again broke sharply with the current Israeli government.
In an August 2025 interview on “Frankly Speaking,” he had said Israel committed “war crimes” in Gaza. More recently, he has drawn attention over comments cited by the New York Times in an article about alleged sexual violence against Palestinian detainees — remarks he said were taken out of context.
“I was asked whether I know about the sexual violence perpetrated by Israelis, and I said I have no information about it,” Olmert said. “I think that the placing of what I said in the context of allegations (of) which I was not even aware, was inappropriate, and I said it to the New York Times, to their correspondent.”
He said he told columnist Nicholas Kristof that he had no direct knowledge of such abuse. At the same time, Olmert said he would not dismiss the possibility that sexual violence had occurred in Israeli custody.
“Is it possible that there was sexual violence perpetrated against Palestinians? I don’t really doubt,” he said. “But I don’t know.”
“I, therefore,” he added, “couldn’t be associated with all the specific allegations that were made by the New York Times correspondent.”
Israel recently threatened a libel suit after the newspaper published a May 11 article alleging a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against Palestinian men, women and children by soldiers, settlers, interrogators and prison guards.
In a May 14 statement on X, Netanyahu called Kristof’s column “one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press.”
The statement said Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar had instructed officials to begin a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper.
The NYT responded by defending the column as “deeply reported” and said Israel’s threat was part of “a well-worn political playbook that aims to undermine independent reporting and stifle journalism that does not fit a specific narrative. Any such legal claim would be without merit.”
Rights groups have documented allegations of sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees for years. But Olmert insisted that, in his own interview with Kristof, he did not validate specific allegations he had not seen evidence for.
He said: “I was asked by Mr. Kristof, and I said to him, and I keep saying it since then, time and again, I didn’t have any specific information about sex violence and that it was perpetrated in there by Israelis as part of the policy.”
“However,” he added, “had there been information presented to me, I may have not been surprised, but I didn’t validate any of the allegations made in The New York Times article.”
Asked how a reputable newspaper could get it so wrong, Olmert said he had no disrespect for the newspaper and was not familiar with the allegations, but he knew Israelis were committing crimes in the Palestinian territories.
“I definitely have no disrespect for the New York Times. And I don’t know, and I think Mr. Kristof has the reputation of a very serious journalist,” he said. “As I said, I’m not familiar with the allegations.
“I know that there are crimes perpetrated by Israelis in the territories,” he added, citing the burning of olive groves and property and shootings of Palestinians “who are not involved in terror.
“This is terrible, unacceptable, unbearable and unforgivable,” he said.
In February, after Israeli authorities announced new plans to expand control over more Palestinian territory, Olmert told Euronews that Israel bore responsibility for the escalating violence in the West Bank, where settlers have repeatedly attacked and displaced Palestinians.
“No one can blame anyone else but the Israelis that live in the West Bank and the government that supports them,” he said then, calling the violence “something that comes close to an attempt to make ethnic cleansing.”
Asked whether he believes ethnic cleansing is taking place now, Olmert pointed to the Hilltop Youth, a loose label for radical settler youths associated with hardline religious-nationalist ideology and frequent attacks on Palestinians.
“They are perpetrating crimes which certainly can be defined within the framework of ethnic cleansing,” he said. “They are trying to force out the Palestinians from the territories, they are burning their properties, they are taking their homes and they are burning their olive groves.
“All this is a war crime, a crime against humanity, and this is something which is definitely aiming at ethnic cleansing,” he added.
Olmert also accused Israeli authorities of failing to stop the violence. He said police too often “close their eyes,” while some military units also fail to intervene against what he called “Jewish terrorists.”
Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the southern Lebanese village of Tourzai on May 17, 2026. (AFP)
Olmert pointed out that in his first week in office Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, canceled the use of administrative detention against Jews — while keeping it for Palestinians.
This, he added, “has certainly contributed to the flexibility that the Jewish terrorists feel in perpetrating these atrocities in the West Bank, not having the fear of being detained by the Israeli law-abiding security agents.”
Since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which triggered the large-scale Israeli assault on Gaza, the number of settler attacks have increased sharply. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 240 Palestinians, including 55 children, were killed in the West Bank in 2025 alone; 225 were killed by Israeli forces and nine by Israeli settlers.
Olmert struck a similarly diplomatic tone on Lebanon, arguing that Israel needs a political plan there as well, not only military pressure.
Since March 2, Lebanon has faced intensified Israeli attacks after the Iran-backed group Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel in retaliation for Khamenei’s killing. Olmert said the Lebanese government appears deeply unhappy with Hezbollah and broadly supportive of disarming the group.
“I think the Lebanese government is definitely unhappy about Hezbollah,” he said. “They think Hezbollah is a real enemy and a threat to the purity and the wellbeing of Lebanon. And they are very much in favor of disarming Hezbollah.”
He pointed to Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s statements that he is prepared to negotiate an agreement with Israel — “perhaps a ceasefire ... and possibly also peace” — and said he welcomed that approach.
Olmert said he was not “particularly happy” about Israeli ground operations in southern Lebanon “for obvious reasons.” But he also said Hezbollah drone attacks on civilian areas in northern Israel are a serious threat that cannot be ignored.
“Part of it has to be an agreement with the government of Lebanon so that those of us together will act to disarm the Lebanese Hezbollah,” he said.
Appearing on the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking,” Olmert argued that a credible agreement would still serve Israel’s core security interests. (AN Photo)
On Friday, the US State Department said Israel and Lebanon had agreed to extend their shaky ceasefire for 45 days after two days of talks in Washington.
Yet even since a truce took hold in mid-April, Israel and Hezbollah have continued to trade fire. Lebanon’s Health Ministry has accused Israel of targeting civilians and paramedics, which Israel denies.
With elections in Israel expected later this year, Olmert said he hopes Netanyahu’s bloc is voted out.
“I certainly hope so,” he said. “In all of the polls which were conducted in Israel over the last three years, there never was one which gave the present coalition government the majority in the votes.
“I think that there is a likelihood that in the coming elections, there will be a stable majority against the present coalition government … I think that this is a bad government. It is a bad government for Israel. It is a bad government because I think that it doesn’t represent a real genuine national security interest for the state of Israel in a proper way.”
Olmert did not absolve Israel’s enemies of responsibility for the region’s turmoil. Hamas, he said, started the war in October 2023, and Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran-backed militias all widened the conflict. Iran itself, he noted, launched major ballistic missile barrages at Israel in April and October 2024.
But, he said, Israel’s leadership failed to meet the moment.
“All of them contributed to the instability and, unfortunately, the Israeli leadership didn’t rise to the heights which were expected and wasn’t responsible and wasn’t innovative and creative enough in offering political solutions rather than military actions,” he said.
As for the election itself, Olmert said he could not predict the result. For now, he said, “the expectation is that there will be a coalition made up of present opposition parties.”
