Washington: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today called for dismantling Iran’s nuclear infrastructure for lifting the tough Iranian sanctions as he reiterated strong opposition to the nuclear deal reached with Tehran.
“Dismantle for dismantle. Dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure for dismantling the sanctions. That was the original administration position and I think it was the right one. But, in fact, Iran actually gets both thing. It gets to keep its nuclear infrastructure and it gets the full dismantling of sanctions in a very short time,” Netanyahu told the ABC news in an interview.
“The hardliners in Iran are actually going to come out strong because they’re getting everything they want. They’re getting a pathway down the line, within a decade or so, to the capacity to be a threshold state with practically zero breakout time to many nuclear bombs, and billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars, which they’ll siphon off to their terror and war machine,” he said.
The US Defense Secretary, Ashton Carter, is visiting Israel next week to hold talks after the deal on Iran’s nuclear program has been reached.
“Everybody talks about compensating Israel. I guess the question you have to ask yourself is, if this deal is supposed to make Israel and our Arab neighbors safer, why should we be compensated with anything,” Netanyahu said.
“Furthermore how can you compensate a country, my country, against a terrorist regime that is sworn to our destruction and is going to get a path to nuclear bombs and billions of dollars to boot for its terror activities against us, against you, against everyone else.I think the right thing to do is not to do this bad deal,” he said.
“I think it’s very important for me as the prime minister of the one and only Jewish state to make our case against the deal that we believe endangers our security, our survival even, and the security of the Middle East and the world. I think that’s important. It’s a substantive disagreement. It should be examined on the substance,” Netanyahu said.