Netanyahu says thwarting Iran a ‘matter of survival’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon was a matter of survival and that Israel and the United States shared that same goal — but disagreed on the means.

“It’s a matter of survival, for the security of the state of Israel, for the security of the Middle East, for the security of the world and also the United States,” Netanyahu told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

The prime minister reiterated his respect and appreciation for President Barack Obama and his administration but said a better deal could be negotiated with Iran, one that would “contract [its] nuclear program, so there is less to inspect.

“I do not trust inspections with totalitarian regimes. It didn’t work with North Korea, they violated it and played a good game of hide and cheat; it didn’t work with Iran, they cheated and bamboozled inspectors,” Netanyahu said.

Under the nose of inspectors, they built two underground bunkers that no one knew about — not inspectors and not the intelligence agencies, he added.

“The current proposal, as I understand it, enables Iran to have a vast nuclear infrastructure, which means a very short break-out time to the bomb, and lifts the restrictions after a decade. The better deal is to increase the break-out time, to limit Iran’s infrastructure and, secondly, to link the lifting of restrictions in the future to a change in Iran’s behavior. To have it stop instigating aggression against its neighbors, worldwide terrorism, and to have them stop threatening the annihilation of Israel,” charged Netanyahu.

Israel is looking for Iran to have break-out capability of at least several years, he indicated.

When asked for his response to a tweet by the White House last week that promoted a Washington Post op-ed on why Netanyahu’s predictions on Iran have been wrong for 25 years, the PM shot back that as far as tweets go, he would retweet Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s post from November in which a 9-point plan for eliminating Israel was published.

Interesting take from @FareedZakaria on why PM Netanyahu's predictions on #Iran have been wrong for 25 years http://t.co/SHffz3GPOj

— Obama NSC- Archived (@NSC44) March 6, 2015

“That gives you a much better perspective on this regime and even in these times of sometimes heated disagreements, it’s useful to remember who your ally is and who your enemy is,” he said.

If reports that the US offered Gulf Arab states a “nuclear umbrella” as protection against a potentially nuclear Iran, “it signals a shift of US policy from preventing a nuclear Iran to containing one and that’s not good.”

The kind of agreement that I’m talking about — that is, increase the break-out time, limit their facilities, and not lift the restrictions on their nuclear program is something that would be a much better deal, something that Israel and many of our Arab neighbors could live with — literally live with,” he concluded.

Earlier Sunday, Obama said that the United States would “walk away” from nuclear talks with Iran if there’s no acceptable deal.

Obama said that any agreement must allow Western powers to verify that Tehran isn’t going to obtain an atomic weapon, and must ensure that even if Iran “cheated,” the US and others would have “enough time to take action.”

Speaking on CBS’s “Sunday Morning,” the president noted that “if we don’t have that kind of deal, then we’re not going to take it.”

Big gaps remain to be bridged if the sides are to reach a deal by the end-of-March deadline set by the negotiators. The next round of talks is set to begin March 15.

Iran says the program is peaceful and exists only to produce energy for civilian use.

Iran and the six-nation group — the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — hope to reach a rough deal on Iran’s disputed nuclear program by March 31 and a final agreement by June 30.