PM: Under Lausanne deal, ‘Iran could be much less than year from bomb’

Netanyahu says the “primary mission” of the government “is to ensure Israel’s security.”

While he greatly appreciates the “covenant” between Israel and the US, the two disagree over how to thwart Iran. “When it comes to an existential threat, Israel must stand up for itself,” he says.

The biggest threat facing Israel is Iran, he stresses, and the agreement taking shape with Iran does not thwart its path to the bomb.

Under the agreement, it seems, Iran will retain its underground facilities, its heavy water facility and thousands of centrifuges — elements entirely unnecessary for a peaceful program.

The time Iran will need to break out to a nuclear weapon, if it signs a deal with world powers in Lausanne, “will be reduced to less than a year, and some even say – much less than a year,” the PM warns.

The deal also fails to cover missile development, research on more sophisticated centrifuges, and Iran’s “campaign of conquest and terror,” carried out “in full view… from the Golan to Yemen, from Iraq to Gaza and in so many other places.”

He says Israel “is not hiding its head in the sand” and will “do everything to protect our security and our future.”

He says “most states” in the region share Israel’s concerns over Iran and over the rise of Islamic extremism. “This offers certain opportunities,” he says, including the possibility of their help “to advance peace with the Palestinians.”

He reiterates that “Israel’s hand is stretched out in peace to all of our neighbors who want peace.”

He quotes from the Haggadah, to be read at the Passover Seder this coming Friday night, in saying that, “In every generation they rise up to destroy us, and the Almighty delivers us from their hands.”

And he concludes, in the Passover spirit, that “there is no real freedom without the capacity to protect it and to protect our people.”