Netanyahu’s biblical Purim message to Iran’s ‘delusional’ rulers

Netanyahu warns Iran that Israel will not sit idly by as the ayatollahs threaten to destroy the Jewish State.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Tuesday that Israel will not permit Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons to fulfill its oft-repeated goal of destroying Israel.

“On the eve of [the festival of] Purim, I would like to say to those who seek our lives, Iran and its proxies in the Middle East: 2,500 years ago, another Persian villain [Haman] tried to destroy the Jewish people and just as he failed then, so too will you fail today. We will not allow your extremist and aggressive regime to attain nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said during a speech at a memorial service in northern Israel.

“We have not made the journey of generations, of thousands of years, to return to the land of Israel in order to allow the delusional regime of the ayatollahs to end the story of the revival of the Jewish people,” the prime minister said.

“We are not pinning our hopes on any agreement with an extremist regime such as yours. We have already seen the quality of agreements with extremist regimes such as yours, in the past century and in this one, with the government of North Korea,” Netanyahu said.

In the 1990s North Korea agreed to end its nuclear weapons program, but years later withdrew from the international Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and set off its first nuclear blast in 2006. North Korea is known to be giving extensive military support to Iran, including ballistic missile technology that can be used to deliver nuclear weapons.

“With or without agreements – we will do everything so that you will not arm yourselves with nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said at the ceremony marking the 100-year anniversary of the death of Zionist pioneer Joseph Trumpeldor and seven others defending the Jewish farming community of Tel Hai in the Upper Galilee in 1920.

The Purim festival celebrated each year recounts the story of how an evil advisor to the ancient king of Persia persuaded him to order the genocide of the Jewish people, but the king subsequently fell in love with a Jewish woman, Esther, who he took as his queen. Esther turned the tables on Haman, the evil advisor, and saved the Jews from destruction.

Iran’s political and military leaders have for decades said their national goal is to destroy Israel, which it calls a “cancer” that has to be removed from the Middle East.

Israel objected when world powers signed a deal with Iran in 2015 to restrict its nuclear activities, pointing out the numerous shortcomings of the agreement, particularly the fact that it didn’t address Iran’s murderous intentions, included  ‘sunset clauses,’ and put limits on how the UN’s international nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, could inspect Iran’s nuclear sites.

Last month, Iran announced it was increasing the rate at which it enriches uranium in a clear violation of the agreement.

Benjamin NetanyahuIran nuclear dealIranian threatNuclear weapons