AMMAN – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said President Donald Trump’s hardline position on the nuclear deal, outlined in his decertification speech on Friday, would help prevent Iran from obtaining an arsenal of nuclear weapons in the next few years.
Netanyahu lauded Trump for his “important decision” in the weekly cabinet meeting at the Knesset, adding that “if nothing changes, Iran will have an arsenal of nuclear weapons within a few years.”
“This agreement does not block this,” the prime minister said, referring to the Obama-era nuclear deal signed between Iran and world powers. “It creates a sure path to the production of an enrichment system that could quickly bring Iran to dozens of atomic bombs and even more.”
By contrast, Trump’s announcement, in which the president said he would not recertify the deal as it stands and may scrap it altogether unless amendments were made, creates “an opportunity to fix the nuclear agreement and stop Iran’s increasing aggression in our region,” Netanyahu said.
“I believe that any responsible government, and whoever seeks to promote peace and security in the world, needs to take advantage of the opportunity that President Trump’s decision has created in order to improve the agreement or abrogate it and, of course, stop Iran’s aggression,” he added.
Netanyahu also praised Trump for authorizing Treasury Department sanctions on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which he described as the “supreme leader’s corrupt personal terror force and militia.”
The Israeli leader said it was “self-evident that the President’s decision to impose sanctions on the Revolutionary Guards needs to be supported.”
“The Revolutionary Guards are Iran’s main arm in spreading terror around the world and, of course, in spreading its aggression throughout the Middle East,” Netanyahu said.