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Israel: as election approaches, Netanyahu reiterates opposition to Iran nuclear deal

August 25, 2022 at 3:18 pm

Former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 23, 2022 [YONATAN SINDEL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images]

As Israel’s latest General Election approaches, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reaffirmed his opposition to reviving the nuclear agreement signed with Iran in 2015.

Netanyahu expressed his position during interviews with Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya TV station and America’s Fox News. He repeated the same message later in a press conference in Tel Aviv.

Israel’s longest-serving prime minister stressed that, if re-elected, he would resume his efforts to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons. “I will return to the policy of actively blocking Iran’s nuclear weapons programme,” he told Al Arabiya, pointing out that there is a “good chance” that he will be Israel’s next prime minister.

“The Iran nuclear deal is a horrible deal, a dangerous deal that will pave Iran’s path with gold, a golden-paved highway to a nuclear arsenal,” Netanyahu told Fox News. “If Iran has nuclear weapons, they don’t merely threaten my country Israel or the entire Middle East, America’s allies; they threaten Americans directly because simultaneously with developing nuclear weapons, they are developing the means to deliver them across continents.”

He warned that the nuclear deal “will cause the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the Middle East will be crisscrossed by nuclear tripwires. It will make the Middle East a powder keg, a nuclear powder keg.”

READ: Iran receives US response to EU nuclear text for revival of 2015 pact