Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Jewish News Syndicate International Policy Summit in Jerusalem on Sunday evening that a bad nuclear deal with Iran would be worse than no deal at all.
Netanyahu addressed the gathering of journalists and activists after briefing international ambassadors earlier in the day, against the backdrop of efforts by the Trump administration to reach a deal with Iran to stop its nuclear weapons program.
He reviewed the progress of the war against Hamas and other Iranian terror proxies with unusual candor, noting several points at which Israel had to act independently of the U.S. — defying President Joe Biden in entering Rafah, in the Gaza Strip; and declining to inform Biden of the operation against Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last year until the warplanes were in flight.
The message was clear: if Israel does not like the Trump administration’s policy on Iran, it will act on its own to destroyed Iran’s nuclear program.
In 2018, Trump backed out of a weak deal negotiated by President Barack Obama in 2015, which allowed Iran to emerge asa a nuclear power after a decade, and did not stop its support for terrorism or its ballistic missile program.
Now, Trump is attempting to reach a deal — while warning that war is the alternative. Israel is worried, despite Trump’s assurances on a military option, that Trump is too eager to reach an agreement with Iran — at a moment when the Iranian regime is extremely weak, after the destruction of its proxies and its air defenses.
Netanyahu said that he trusted Trump’s desire to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but said that the “real deal that works” would not only dismantle Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, but also remove Iran’s ability to enrich uranium in the future.
“Anything short of that could bring you the opposite result,” Netanyahu said, adding that ballistic missiles should be brought into the deal — or else Iran would simply wait out the Trump presidency and go back to developing nuclear weapons.
He cited Libya’s arrangement with the world in 2003, under which it dismantled its nuclear weapons program and voluntarily removed its own ability to enrich uranium.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
