by Shlomo Cesana, Erez Linn, Lilach Shoval, AP and Israel Hayom Staff
Defense Ministry issues stinging response to U.S. President Barack Obama's assertion that Israel now approves of Iran nuclear deal • PM Benjamin Netanyahu's office clarifies that while Israel's stance hasn't changed, U.S. is Israel's most important ally.
U.S. President Barack Obama
on Thursday
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Photo credit: AFP  |
The Prime Minister's Office is distancing
itself from a harsh Defense Ministry statement directed at U.S.
President Barack Obama, who contended last week that Israel no longer
opposes the landmark nuclear agreement struck between Iran and six world
powers in 2015.
Obama said in remarks on Thursday that the
Iran deal was working and that "it's the assessment of the Israeli
military and intelligence community ... that acknowledges this has been a
game-changer."
He stated that "the country that was most
opposed to the deal" -- meaning Israel -- had come around, and that the
dire predictions made by Israel had not come to fruition.
In response, Israel's Defense Ministry
compared the deal to the 1938 Munich Pact ahead of World War II, which
Britain and France signed with Germany and which averted war at the time
but effectively gave then-Czechoslovakia to the Nazis.
The Defense Ministry's response stressed that
Israel "believes that agreements only have value if they are based on an
existing reality, and they have no value if the facts on the ground are
the complete opposite of the facts upon which the agreement is based.
"The Munich Agreement did not prevent World
War II and the Holocaust precisely because the fundamental assumption,
according to which Nazi Germany could be any kind of partner to an
agreement, was mistaken, and because world leaders at the time ignored
the clear statements made by Hitler and the other leaders of Nazi
Germany."
In an effort to lower the flames, Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office issued a statement on Friday saying
that while "Israel's view on the Iran deal remains unchanged," it
stressed that "Netanyahu fiercely believes that Israel has no ally more
important than the United States. As Netanyahu detailed in his speech at
the U.N. General Assembly last year, it is important that both those
who agreed to and those who opposed [the deal] cooperate to achieve
three goals: confirm that Iran is not violating the terms of the
agreement; deal with Iran's regional aggression; and dismantle Iran's
global terror network."
Additionally, Jacob Nagel, acting head of
Israel's National Security Council, met with U.S. Ambassador to Israel
Dan Shapiro to clarify that, despite the Defense Ministry statement,
Israel does not intend to reopen the Iran nuclear deal issue with the
United States.
Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid said that "the
Defense Ministry's response is a mixture of diplomatic irresponsibility
and unnecessary damage to the relationship between Israel and the United
States. An official Israeli body simply cannot compare the American
president to someone who bowed to the Nazis."
Similarly, Zionist Union MK Shelly Yachimovich described the Defense Ministry's response as "reckless and irresponsible."
She added that since Israel was "on the verge
of finalizing an agreement regarding American defense aid, which the IDF
needs to badly, this kind of diplomatic damage borders on undermining
national security."
Still, criticism of the Iran deal is ongoing
in the United States as well. Iranian-born journalist Amir Taheri
strongly criticized Obama's remarks in a New York Post op-ed recently.
According to Taheri, the Iran nuclear deal is part of Obama's attempt to
justify his Nobel Peace Prize while passing the problem on to his
successor. He wrote that the "once-in-a-lifetime" deal was simply "a
smoke screen" that would allow Obama to "help the Iranian theocracy
negotiate its way out of a severe political and economic crisis in
exchange for endorsing Obama’s claim that he had prevented 'yet another
war' in the Middle East."
Taheri added that "in exchange for vague
promises, Obama has solved the Islamic Republic's cash-flow problem by
releasing unknown quantities of frozen assets... A lump sum of $1.7
billion from assets frozen under President Jimmy Carter went straight
into the budget of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard to help it upgrade
its adventures in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen."
He summed up the issue, writing that a year on
from the deal "'The Iran Problem' remains intact. In Tehran we have a
regime that cannot liberate itself from its dangerous illusions and
continues to behave like a rebellious teenager who refuses to grow up."
American Center for Democracy Director Rachel
Ehrenfeld also published a biting article on Friday warning of the
deal's "corrupting effects" and stating that "nothing seems to deter the
[U.S.] administration's determination to satisfy Iran's Supreme
Leader."
Shlomo Cesana, Erez Linn, Lilach Shoval, AP and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=35511
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