Netanyahu, speaking to ABC News, rejects the notion of US military compensation for the Iran nuclear deal.
“Everybody talks about compensating Israel. If this deal is supposed to make Israel and our Arab neighbors safer, why should we be compensated for anything?” Netanyahu says.
“How can you compensate a country, my country, against a terrorist regime that is sworn to our destruction and is going to get a path to nuclear bombs and billions of dollars to boot for its terror activities,” he says.
The prime minister says the agreement “endangers our security, our survival even.”
He says that while he respects the US, Israeli, and British intelligence services, for years the Iranian underground nuclear activity and the Syrian reactor went undetected by all. So despite reassurances that any Iranian breaches of the deal will not go unnoticed, the prime minister says “it’s very thin ice.”
The prime minister says the ideal agreement would be “dismantle for dismantle” — that Iran dismantle its nuclear infrastructure in exchange for sanctions relief.
“The hardliners in Iran are actually going to come out strong, because they’re getting everything they want,” he says.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads the weekly cabinet meeting at the PM’s Office in Jerusalem on July 19, 2015. (Photo by Emil Salman/POOL)
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