Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is warning that the Iran nuclear arms deal will lead to war in the Middle East. During a webcast Tuesday, Netanyahu predicted the deal would only further destabilize the region, resulting in an arms race.
“The deal that was supposed to end nuclear proliferation, will actually trigger nuclear proliferation. It will trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East,” contended Netanyahu.
The Israeli Prime Minister, who spoke Tuesday afternoon on a video conference organized by the Jewish Federation of North America, pled with the nearly 10,000 participants to actively speak out against the deal. “The days when the Jewish people could not or would not speak up for themselves, those days are over,” he said. “Today we can speak out. Today we must speak out. And we must do so together.”
Netanyahu, who has been an ardent critic of the deal argued that the agreement would bring Tehran closer to producing a nuclear weapon. “The nuclear deal with Iran doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb,” he charged. “It actually paves Iran’s path to the bomb.” In the prime minister’s estimation, if Iran upholds the agreement it could obtain a nuclear weapon within 15 years. He further signaled that Iran would likely skirt the agreement and since the deal allows as many as 24 days to pass for inspectors to evaluate suspicious sites, Tehran’s secret activities would go undetected by world powers.
“Twenty-four days is more than enough time to clean up a site of all traces of illicit activity,” Netanyahu stated. “It’s like police giving a drug dealer three-and-a-half weeks notice before raiding his lab. You can flush a lot of nuclear meth down the toilet in 24 days.”
As President Obama met with 20 American Jewish leaders today at the White House to soothe concerns over the deal, Netanyahu pushed back on the administration’s assertion that those opposed to the nuclear arms deal favor war. “I don’t oppose this deal because I want war, I oppose this deal because I want to prevent war, and this deal will bring war,” said Netanyahu.
The Israeli prime minister noted his differences with President Obama over the deal had “never been personal,” asserting the relationship Israel and the United State shares can weather deep disagreements. However, Netanyahu called the administration’s claim that the only alternative to the nuclear agreement is war, “utterly false.”
With polls showing wide public disapproval of the nuclear arms deal, the White House has been actively rallying support, especially among the country’s Jewish community. On Tuesday, The White House published the 159 page agreement to Medium. The posting to the social media site includes annotated comments, defending the agreement from Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.
“I learned in war the price that is paid when diplomacy fails,” Kerry writes in the preface.
House Republican leaders announced Tuesday that Congress will vote on a resolution to disapprove of the nuclear deal when they return from recess in September.
