Netanyahu: As Long as I’m PM, Iran Will Never Get the Bomb

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on the campaign trail ahead of elections later this month, on Tuesday vowed as long as he was in office Iran would never acquire an atomic bomb.

“As long as I’m prime minister, Iran will not have nuclear bombs,” he said during an interview at his residence in Jerusalem.

Speaking to the Tel Aviv International Salon, Israel’s largest speaker’s forum, Netanyahu went on to list the actions taken by Israel that he claimed had set Iran’s nuclear ambitions back by at least a year, including his controversial 2015 speech to a joint session of Congress under the Obama administration, a 2018 raid on a Tehran warehouse in  which Mossad operatives spirited half a ton of secret documents on the country’s nuclear program, and a host of other, secret actions.

“If it weren’t for the effort I lead worldwide, including going to the American congress and standing up to the Iran deal, Iran would have not [just] a nuclear bomb, it would have an arsenal of nuclear bombs,” he said.

According to Netanyahu, Arab Gulf states were willing to sign normalization deals with Israel because of the Israeli premier’s Iran policy.

“One of the things that unites them is that they said, ‘We respect your leadership, we know that you stand up to Iran and that’s why we’re standing with you.”

Netanyahu then attacked his main political opponent, Yesh Atid leader, Yair Lapid.

“This is the man who will stop Iran?” he said. “Lapid, who said the Congress speech was a terrible idea.”

Asked about what legacy he would leave as Israel’s longest serving president, Netanyahu reiterated his commitment to stopping Iran.

“I have devoted much of my adult life to preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons,” he said.

“The protector of Israel. That’s my legacy.”