Lapid: Netanyahu must quit if Iran deal goes through

Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid called Monday for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign should world powers sign an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program, as it would prove he failed to fulfill his years-long pledge to scupper a bad agreement.

“For three election campaigns, he committed to being the leader who would prevent such a bad agreement,” Lapid told the Ynet news site. He accused the prime minister of bringing about the opposite outcome.

“[He] told the citizens of Israel: ‘I am the only one who can prevent a deal with the Iranians’ and in the end, because of him this bad agreement was not prevented,” Lapid said.

The P5+1 world powers — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus Germany — are holding what they hope will be final negotiations on a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which would remove crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Lapid, who served as finance minister in Netanyahu’s previous government, also criticized the prime minister in a statement Monday for not focusing on the issue of monitoring and inspections of Iran’s nuclear program.

“This is an agreement that doesn’t allow inspectors to go and check whether Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons. It is an agreement that essentially only freezes centrifuges,” Lapid said. “It takes only 24 hours to resume work with centrifuges. It is an agreement that makes Iran officially a nuclear-threshold state.”

Lapid also blasted Netanyahu for diminishing Israel’s influence in the negotiations.

“When they sit in Vienna, there is no senior Israeli official present,” he said. “When they go to Congress and the US administration, there is not a single person willing to listen to a word of what Netanyahu is saying.”

Sources in Jerusalem assess that the deal will likely be approved in the initial stage, with Congress fearing that any delay could harm US industry, as the other world powers rush to resume business with Iran. Others believe not all is lost and the deal can be defeated with the right diplomatic work on Israel’s part.

Officials have stressed all week that this is the endgame, and after missing several deadlines they are not planning to extend the negotiations again. The current deadline is Tuesday.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.