JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel would not be bound to a nuclear deal between world powers and Iran if that would enable the Islamic republic to develop nuclear weapons.
“An agreement with Iran that would pave the way to nuclear weapons — weapons that threaten our extinction — would not compel us in any way,” Netanyahu said in a speech, on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“There is one thing that compels us — to prevent those who seek our extermination from carrying out their plot,” he said at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and the European Union — acting as an intermediary for the US — met in Vienna Tuesday for talks with Iran, aimed at rescuing the 2015 international agreement on Tehran’s nuclear programme.
US President Joe Biden has said he is ready to reverse the decision of his predecessor Donald Trump to withdraw from the agreement and reimpose unilateral sanctions, raising concern in Israel.
The nuclear talks were set to continue on Friday.
Iran and Israel have both recently attacked each other’s commercial vessels, according to reports.
Israel believes Iran was cheating on the deal and working toward a nuclear weapon, while Tehran denies such ambitions.
Wednesday’s Holocaust ceremony came as an annual anti-Semitism report by Tel Aviv university and the European Jewish Congress said that while coronavirus lockdowns brought a decrease in physical attacks against Jews, vandalism towards Jewish property and institutions globally rose by 20 percent.
“During times of social crises, Jews are always scapegoated and targeted, and we have seen this throughout the Covid cycle,” said Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress.
“Jews have been blamed for the virus and the cure, and the restrictions and vaccines have been inappropriately compared with the Holocaust, which minimizes and diminishes the murder of six million Jews,” he said.
Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies will continue on Thursday, when sirens will blare across the country for two minutes in the morning, followed by a series of events in memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Newspakistan.tv | YouTube Channel
