Netanyahu: ‘Bad’ Iran agreement brought Israel ‘closer to Arab world’

In an address on Monday, Netanyahu lauded the Iran nuclear agreement’s unintended
outcome of aligning the interests of Israel and several of its neighbors in the Arab world.

By: World Israel News Staff

During a toast held on Monday for Foreign Ministry personnel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu extolled the Iran nuclear agreement’s unexpected outcome of uniting Israel and its Arab neighbors against a common enemy.

The toast was held in anticipation of the Jewish New Year next week and Netanyahu’s statements at the event were released in a statement following the event.

“The agreement with Iran was a bad agreement in every respect except for one – it brought us closer to the Arab world on a scale that we never knew, and one of our goals is that it continues,” declared Netanyahu.

“I think that another important thing is, of course, the fact that there is a gradual normalization with leading countries in the Arab world,” he added.

The agreement to which Netanyahu referred is the 2015 deal that lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran in return for the Islamic Republic’s submission to an inspections regime intended to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.

Critics of the deal, such as Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, maintained it did nothing to prevent Iran from arming and funding regional terror proxies, propping up brutal Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad, or developing intercontinental ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads, all of which Iran continued to do after the deal was signed.

Critics also questioned the deal’s efficacy in actually preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

While Netanyahu didn’t mention Saudi Arabia specifically, the kingdom recently signaled a willingness to potentially end a decades-old policy of refusing to recognize the Jewish state.

In an interview in The Atlantic in April, for instance, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was quoted as saying that Israelis have a right to their own land.

Later that month, it was reported that the Bin Salman expressed frustration with Palestinian leadership in a closed-door meeting with heads of Jewish organizations in New York in March, according to a report by American news site Axios.

Last year at this time, rumors circulated that the prince had visited Israel during a secret trip.

Iranian terror proxies menace both Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of which exist under the looming threat of the Islamic Republic developing a nuclear arsenal.

At the toast on Monday, Netanyhau concluded, “We are in the process of flourishing diplomacy. We are also in a struggle for justice and truth and . . . gradual normalization, which in the end heralds a genuine opening for peace.”