Netanyahu: Stopping Iranian nuke remains Israel's priority

[Israel Insider]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he isn't about to second-guess US President Barack Obama's equivocal approach on Iran after the Teheran government's political crackdown. He has enough problems with Obama. "I have no doubt everybody in the world is sympathetic to the Iranians' desire for freedom," he said, safely.

Netanyahu stressed he is a big believer in democracy, expressing amazement and admiration for the willingness of the Iranian people to stand up for their rights. Iran's violent crackdown on demonstrators in Iran's major cities, Netanyahu said, showed that the regime was not democratic. "Democracies do things differently," Netanyahu said.

The prime minister, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," said that Israel, like most of the world, wanted a regime change in Iran, but stressed that the main goal was to prevent Teheran from obtaining nuclear weapons. "The goal is to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons," he said. "We all don't want to see this regime acquiring nuclear weapons […] It's not merely an interest of Israel." Netanyahu stressed that a nuclear-armed Iran would trigger instability in the region and pose a threat to the world through the ensuing arms race and the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists.

Netanyahu said that in his view Obama was as committed as former president George W. Bush was to preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon. He would not rule out an Israeli attack against the Iranian program, saying that Israel "always reserves the right to defend itself," adding that "We are threatened as no other people are threatened."

President Shimon Peres earlier Sunday praised post-election protests in Iran and said he hoped the Islamic Republic's government would disappear. "Let the young people raise their voice of freedom for a positive policy. Let the Iranian women, who are a very courageous group of people, to voice their thirst for equality, for freedom," Peres said in a speech to visiting Jewish fundraisers. "I really don't know what will disappear first, their enriched uranium, or their poor government," he said Peres. "Hopefully, the poor government will disappear."

Transcript - Prime Minister Netanyahu on NBC's Meet the Press 21 June 2009

MR. GREGORY: All right, our chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel.
Thank you very much for being here in Washington, and Ali Arouzi in Tehran,
thank you very much.

We want to go live now to Jerusalem and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu. Prime Minister, welcome.

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: Thank you, good to be with you.

MR. GREGORY: This is an unfolding story that we've been seeing all week
long.

The images from the streets are disturbing. You have a violent crackdown
underway in Iran. What does your intelligence in Israel tell you about the
weakness, the nature of the Iranian regime today?

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: Well, it's not my intelligence but my common sense in
the traditional sense. Obviously, you see a regime that represses its own
people and spreads terror far and wide. It is a regime whose real nature has
been unmasked, and it's been unmasked by incredible acts of courage by Iran
citizens. They go into the streets, they face bullets and, I tell you, as
somebody who believes deeply in democracy, that you see the Iranian lack of
democracy at work, and I think this better explains and best explains to the
entire world what this regime is truly about.

MR. GREGORY: I asked about your intelligence services, as well, in terms of
what hard information you have about what's going on inside the regime.

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: I don't know if anyone really knows, and I cannot tell
you how this thing will end up. I think something very deep, very
fundamental, is going on, and there is an expression of a deep desire amid
the people of Iran for freedom -- certainly for greater freedom, but perhaps
the word is a simple one -- freedom. This is what is going on.

You don't need all the intelligence apparatus that modern states have to see
something when it faces you right away. It's staring us in the face, there
is no question about that.

MR. GREGORY: You know there has been quite a debate here in the United
States and, really, around the world about what President Obama should do
and should say at a moment like this. He has said over the weekend that
these are unjust actions; that the whole world is watching; that Iran should
not violently crack down on its people. Has he said and done enough, do you
think?

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: I'm not going to second-guess the President of the
United States. I know President Obama wants the people of Iran to be free.
He said as much in his seminal speech in Cairo before the Muslim world. I
have spoken to him a number of times on the subject. There is no question we
would all like to see a different Iran with different policies. Remember,
this is a regime that not only represses its own people -- Sakharov said --
Andrei Sakharov, the great Russian scientist and humanist -- said that a
regime that oppresses its own people sooner or later will oppress its
neighbors and, certainly, Iran has been doing that. It's been calling for
the denial of the Holocaust. It's threatening to wipe Israel off the map;
it's pursuing nuclear weapons to that effect; it's sponsoring terror against
us but throughout the world.

So I think what everybody would like to see is a change of policy, is about
outside and inside.

MR. GREGORY: But does the United States have a unique role to play here in
continuing to support this freedom movement, as you call it, in Iran -- an
obligation to support the protestors, to really give them moral support, at
the very least?

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: I think it's clear that the United States -- the
people of the United States, the president of the United States, free people
everywhere, decent people everywhere, are amazed at the desire of the people
there to -- and their willingness -- to stand up for their rights.

I cannot, as I said, tell you what is going to happen. I'll tell you what I
would do, what we all would do in the face of demonstrations. As we speak,
David, there is a demonstration right now, outside my window, outside my
office. Well, democracies act differently. They don't send armed agents of
the regime to brutally mow down the demonstrators.

I'll tell you what I did -- I called in these demonstrators. They happen to
be representatives of a non-Jewish minority in Israel, the Druze community.
They have certain protests about the financing of their municipalities. I
call their leaders in, I talk to them. I said, "How can I help you?" That's
what democratic leaders do, that's what democratic countries do.

MR. GREGORY: Let me --

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: We have had thousands, hundreds of thousands,
demonstrate in Israel right and left, but that's how we behave, that's how
you behave, and I have no doubt that everyone in the world is sympathetic to
the desire of the Iranian people for freedom.

MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you about the nature of the Iranian threat. Mohamed
ElBaradei who, as you know, runs the International Atomic Energy Agency,
said in an interview with the BBC on Wednesday the following: "The ultimate
aim of Iran," he said, "as I understand it, is they want to be recognized as
a major power in the Middle East. Increasing their nuclear capability is, to
them, the road to get that recognition, to get that power and prestige. It
is also an insurance policy against what they have heard in the past about
regime change."

My question, Prime Minister, what does all that's happening on the streets
of Iran do, in your estimation, to the nature of the threat from Iran? Is
this a game-changer in some way?

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: First of all, I don't subscribe to the view that
Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons is a status symbol. It's not. These are
people who are sending thousands and thousands of missiles to their
terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, with the specific instruction to
bomb civilians in Israel. They are supporting terrorists in the world. This
is not a status symbol.

To have such a regime acquire nuclear weapons is to risk the fact that they
might give it to terrorists or give terrorists a nuclear umbrella -- that is
a departure in the security of the Middle East and the world, certainly the
security of my country. So I wouldn't treat the subject so lightly.

Would a regime change be a game-changer? A policy change would be a
game-changer.

I suppose that goes along with --

MR. GREGORY: But we may not have regime change here. You may not have regime
change even if there is not. Is everything that's happening on the street,
does it make Iran more or less likely to engage with the West over its
nuclear program?

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: I don't know. I think it's too early to say what will
transpire, both in Iran and on the international scene. As I said, I think
something fundamental is taking place here.

But I did speak to President Obama about the question of engagement before
this happened, and he made it clear that engagement is not an end in itself.
It is a means to an end, and the end has to be to prevent this regime from
developing nuclear weapons capability. And he said he'd leave all options on
the table, and I'd say if it was right before these demonstrations, well,
it's doubly right now.

MR. GREGORY: Prime Minister, there has always been debate about whether,
when it comes to the threat of a nuclear Iran, whether there is Washington
clock and a Jerusalem clock. And let me show you a book by David Sanger of
the New York Times that he wrote called, "The Inheritance, the World Obama
Confronts and the Challenge to American Power."

And in the course of his reporting for that book, he wrote this about
Israel's plans: "Early in 2008 the Israeli government signaled that it might
be preparing to take matters into its own hands" -- this is about Iran --
"In a series of meetings, Israeli officials asked Washington for a new
generation of powerful bunker-busters far more capable of blowing up a deep
underground plant than anything in Israel's arsenal of conventional weapons.
They asked for refueling equipment that would allow their aircraft to reach
Iran and return to Israel, and they asked for the right to fly over Iraq."

My question -- if there is not tangible progress toward de-fanging Iran as
a potential nuclear power by the end of the year, do you, as a leader of
Israel, go back to that planning that Israel had underway in 2008 against
Iran?

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: I can't confirm those assertions. I can say that
Israel shares with the United States and with many, many countries -- let me
tell you, David, I think we share it with just about all the governments in
the Middle East. I've talked to many of the leading European heads of
governments and many others -- we all don't want to see this regime acquire
nuclear weapons. This regime that supports terrorists and calls for the
annihilation of Israel and for the domination of the Middle East and
beyond -- I think this would be something that would endanger the peace of
the world, not just my own country's security and the stability of the
Middle East.

It would spawn, for one thing, a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
Everybody understands that. So the Middle East could become a nuclear
tinderbox, and that is something that is very -- a very, very grave
development.


MR. GREGORY: And there --

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: I think stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons
capability is not merely an interest of Israel. As I think the current --
the recent events -- the current events now demonstrate this is something of
deep interest for all people who want peace and seek peace throughout the
world.

MR. GREGORY: If the international community proves unable to stop Iran, is
it your view that Israel will have to?

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: It is my view that there is an American commitment to
make sure that that doesn't happen, and I think I'd leave it at that.

MR. GREGORY: But there is a precedent here. Israel, in 1981, took out a
nuclear reactor in Iraq. Israel, in 2007, took out a nuclear reactor in
Syria. There is precedent and a proclivity for Israel to take unilateral
action if it deems it necessary for its security. That could be the case
with regard to Iran, no?

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: Well, I don't think I have to add to anything that
I've said. We are -- the Jewish people have been -- is one of the oldest
nations in the world. We've been around for 3,500 years. We are threatened
as no other people have been threatened. We have suffered pogroms, exiles,
massacres, and the greatest massacre of them all, the Holocaust. So,
obviously, Israel always reserves the right to defend itself.

MR. GREGORY: You have said, you said it to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic
magazine, talking about Iran -- that it was a Messianic and apocalyptic cult
controlling atomic bombs. The Obama administration argues that for the past
eight years, under President Bush, there has been a hard line calling it
part of the "axis of evil," and where has that hard line gotten America?
Only emboldening Iran over that period of time. Is your hard line -- is the
U.S. hard line over the past eight years the wrong strategy to get Iran to
change its behavior?

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: I think that the president spoke to me quite
explicitly about the great threat that Iran's development of nuclear weapons
capability poses to the United States. I saw, in fact, the continuity, in
that sense, of an assessment of the threat. But, of course, as you say, the
clock is ticking. The Iranian nuclear program is advancing.

And so the problem that now faces the entire world is to ask themselves a
simple question -- can we allow this brutal regime that sees no inhibitions
in how it treats its own citizens and its purported enemies abroad -- can we
allow such a regime to acquire nuclear weapons? And the answer that we hear
from far and wide is no.

MR. GREGORY: Prime Minister, just about 20 seconds here before you go. There
is concern within the Obama administration that, as a political matter, it
may be difficult for you to survive and pursue peace with the Palestinians.
Do you share that concern?

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: Absolutely not. I gave a speech in which I gave out
the winning formula for peace, which is a demilitarized Palestinian state
that recognizes Israel as the state of the Jewish people. And these two
elements of recognition of Israel as a state of the Jewish people and a
demilitarized Palestinian state, I think is something that all people who
want peace should unite around.

And I have to tell you, since giving that speech, I have been delighted and
heartened by the fantastic support across the Israeli political spectrum,
really cutting across the political parties and political views, and I think
that's very important because people understand it is inherently fair. What
I am suggesting is that if we are asked to recognize the Palestinian state
as the nation state of the Palestinian people, then the Palestinians should
recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people who have been
deprived of a land of their own and of security for so long.

MR. GREGORY: All right. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thanks so much
for your time this morning.

PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: Thank you.

[Robert Bernier]

The domestic problems of Ahmadinejad .
Ahmadinejad has failed to deliver on promises of improving the economy and creating jobs, and he has exploited the nuclear controversy as his last hope of rallying political support. “Ultimately it is not President Ahmadinejad who decides Iran’s nuclear policy, but the country’s spiritual leader [Ayatollah] Ali Khomeini,” noted an Israeli official. “Ahmadinejad will not compromise because he seeks confrontation, but Khomeini or another presidential candidate may be tempted to accept a compromise package drawn up by the West in return for halting uranium enrichment.” More about Iran today at : http://xrl.us/biz87