Netanyahu: Israel will to not be bound by a deal enabling Iranian nuclear weapons

Netanyahu: Israel will to not be bound by a deal enabling Iranian nuclear weapons
April 8, 2021, 9:45 am

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu uses a chart as he speaks about the Iranian nuclear program at the UN General Assembly. (File photo: AFP)

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Tel Aviv would not be bound to a new nuclear deal between world powers and Iran if that would enable Tehran to develop nuclear weapons.

“An agreement with Iran that would pave the way to nuclear weapons -- weapons that threaten our extinction -- would not bind us in any way,” Netanyahu said in a speech, on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“There is only one thing that will compel us: to prevent those who seek to destroy us from carrying out their plot.”

The PM’s remarks come a day after Iran and the US launched indirect talks through European intermediaries in Vienna to revive the deal that Iran agreed in 2015 with six world powers - the United States, France, Britain, Russia, Germany and China.

Separately, Israel informed the US that it attacked the Iranian ship Saviz in the Red Sea on Tuesday in retaliation for earlier Iranian strikes on Israeli vessels, the New York Times reported citing an American official.

The attack is the latest in a series of attacks on Israeli- and Iranian-owned cargo ships since late February in which the two arch-foes held the other responsible.