Netanyahu: We will not be bound by an Iran deal that threatens to destroy us

“We are obligated to only one thing: To prevent anyone who seeks to destroy us from carrying out their plot,” Netanyahu said.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

Speaking from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directed a warning at the Biden administration and others seeking to reenter the Iran deal during his speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which began at sundown on Wednesday.

His remarks come one day after reports that Iran and the U.S. will set up two working groups to get both countries back into compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. One will deal with lifting Trump administration sanctions. The other will focus on how to roll back Iran’s nuclear enrichment.

“The nuclear deal with Iran, which gives it international approval to advance the development of an arsenal of atomic bombs, is once again on the table. But history has taught us that such agreements, with such extremist regimes, aren’t worth the paper they’re written on,” Netanyahu said.

“Even to our best friends, I say: We are not bound in any way to an agreement with Iran that paves the way for nuclear weapons. We are obligated to only one thing: To prevent anyone who seeks to destroy us from carrying out their plot,” Netanyahu said.

It’s not the first time the prime minister has used his platform on Holocaust Remembrance Day to draw a comparison between Iran and the Nazi regime that attempted to destroy the Jews.

“During the Holocaust we did not have the power and sovereign right to defend ourselves. We were disenfranchised, defenseless. Today we have a state, we have a defensive force and we have the natural and complete right in the sovereign state of the Jewish people to defend ourselves by our own right,” Netanyahu said.

The prime minister’s direct and public repudiation of the Iran deal and the possibility of restarting it appears to contradict reports in the Hebrew press that Israel was planning on a different strategy when confronting the U.S. administration over Iran this time around as opposed to how it countered the threat during the Obama years.

According to one report, the Israelis were developing a different, quieter strategy.

However, the U.S. also said it would consult Israel before reentering the deal. The swiftness with which events are moving raises questions whether the Israelis were brought into the deliberative process in any serious way.

The original Iran deal was orchestrated by former President Barack Obama and then abandoned by former President Donald Trump in 2018.