Bibi to talk tough on Iran in US
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made plans to visit the United States at the start of next month, and spend several days there lobbying for a hard line against Iran.
As far as Jerusalem is concerned, with the six-month interim deal underway, the race is on to convince the West that it must drive a hard bargain with Iran if it decides to make a permanent agreement after the interim one.
News developments helped Netanyahu’s argument this week. Iran’s official news agency claimed that the military had test-fired two missiles, one of them a long-range ballistic weapon. And a semi-official news agency reported that the military is moving ships towards American waters. “Iran’s military fleet is approaching the United States’ maritime borders, and this move has a message,” it quoted Admiral Afshin Rezayee Haddad, commander of Iran’s Northern Navy Fleet, as saying.
Iran also upped its rhetoric, bragging in a video that it could defeat America and Israel if they initiate a military conflict. In the video, which Iran presented as a simulation of what its response to an attack would look like, says that “America, its regional puppets and its guard dog, the Zionist regime, should know that the response of the Iranian nation to any kind of aggression, attacks or even threats will be a response that will make them collapse from within.”
On Sunday, Netanyahu appeared to preview the message for his US trip, telling his cabinet: “The international easing of the sanctions against Iran has not led Iran to moderate its international aggression; the complete opposite has occurred.
“The Iranian Foreign Minister recently met with the head of Islamic Jihad. Iran is continuing to supply terrorist organisations with deadly weapons; Iran continues to be complicit in massacres in Syria; and to all this may be added the leader of Iran’s crude and sharp attack against the US, alongside sending warships to the Atlantic Ocean,” Netanyahu said.
“What is happening here is that the international community has reduced the sanctions on Iran and Iran is stepping up its international aggression. This is the real result of the steps up until now.”
NATHAN JEFFAY
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