PM on US ties: Whoever endangers us, on Iran nukes for example, I oppose that

Tonight’s Channel 12 interview now turns to Netanyahu’s ties to the US and its new president.

Joe Biden hasn’t called, notes interviewer Yonit Levy.

Netanyahu: “He’ll call.”

“Aren’t you bothered?”

“We’ve had friendly relations for almost 40 years…. We know each other. We agree on a lot… There are differences: on Iran and the Palestinians.”

Are the Americans distancing from him? Isn’t Israel harmed, she asks, apparently because it is now less regarded as a bipartisan US cause?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) holds a joint press conference with then-US vice president Joe Biden at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, March 9, 2016. (Amit Shabi/Pool)

“I have excellent relations with the Democrats,” he says, noting that he has met with hundreds of Democratic and Republican lawmakers over the years — on what he has checked and confirms is a 50-50 basis.

It is not a matter of Republicans and Democrats, he says. “It’s a question of policy,” he says. “Whoever supports our policy, I’m with them. And whoever endangers us, for example [on policies] regarding a nuclear Iran, which is an existential threat to us, so I oppose that. And I don’t care if it’s Democrats or…”

Biden has said he intends to re-enter the 2015 JCPOA Iran nuclear deal, which Netanyahu bitterly opposed when it was being negotiated in the Obama era and which he has warned it would be a mistake to reenter in its original form. Trump withdrew from the accord in 2018.

As the interview winds down, the prime minister is asked about his son Yair’s inflammatory social media posts: “I don’t control him…”