Netanyahu pleased with Zarif’s reaction to drone display

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he was pleased with the response of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who called the PM’s display of a piece of a downed Iranian drone a “cartoonish circus.”

The fact that [Zarif] had to respond to it was the whole point,” Netanyahu says.

The prime minister tells reporters that the driving force behind his intense focus on Iran in his speech was to sway US President Donald Trump’s decision in two months about putting sanctions against Iran back into place.

“It was meant to address the current aggressiveness of Iran on the ground and to influence what will happen in Washington in a few months,” he says.

Last month, Trump extended sanctions relief for Iran as part of the nuclear deal, but indicated that the US was prepared to withdraw from it and put the sanctions back into place at the end of the extension in approximately two months.

— Judah Ari Gross