North Korea’s recent nuclear test is proof that sanctions against Iran’s nuclear
program will fail if they are not coupled by a credible military threat, Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told The Jewish Agency Board of Governors on Monday
morning in Jerusalem.
“The world has to decide whether it allows [Iran’s]
terror regime that breaks all norms to have access to atomic bombs,” Netanyahu
said.
North Korea was widely condemned last week after conducting its
third nuclear test since 2006, defying UN resolutions and potentially putting
the country closer to a workable long-range nuclear missile.
European
Union governments agreed on Monday to tighten sanctions against North Korea,
restricting the country’s ability to trade following last week’s nuclear
test.
But in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said that the world had not done enough
to stop North Korea’s nuclear program, just like it was now failing to halt
Iran’s.
“Have tough sanctions stopped North Korea? No.”
Netanyahu
said. “And the fact that they produced a nuclear explosion reverberates
everywhere in the Middle East, and especially in Iran,” he said.
“They
say, “Where is the world? Where is the international community? Where is the
tough response?’ It’s a question that everybody deserves to ask,” Netanyahu
said. “Sanctions alone will not stop the nuclear program of Iran. They have to
be coupled with a robust, credible military threat. If they are not, there’s no
chance to stop it. If they’re coupled with that military threat, there is a
chance to stop it. And if it doesn’t stop it that way, then it will have to be
stopped another way.”
He added that Iran had moved closer to the red line
he set in the fall when he addressed the United Nations, charging that Tehran is
building the rapid centrifuges needed to enrich uranium for a nuclear
bomb.
Iran has criticized a reported plan by major powers to demand the
closure of a uranium enrichment plant in return for an easing of sanctions on
Tehran’s trade in gold and other precious metals, Iranian media reported on
Monday.
On Sunday, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, chairman of Iran’s parliamentary
Committee for Foreign Policy and National Security, said Fordow would never be
shut down and that proposing its closure was “meant to help the Zionist
regime.”
But in Jerusalem on Monday, Netanyahu said once he forms a
government, stopping Iran’s nuclear program will be his highest
priority.
It is also the most important issue that he plans to discuss
with US President Barack Obama when he arrives in Israel for a visit this
spring, Netanyahu said.
Iran, the prime minister said, “is conducting a
worldwide web of terror – brazen, unabashed, across a dozen countries.” It has
armed and enabled its “henchmen,” which are terror groups such as Hezbollah,
Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, Netanyahu said.
“They’re conducting a brazen
campaign of cyber attacks against everyone – against Israel, against the United
States,” Netanyahu said, adding that a nuclear Iran will spark an unprecedented
arms race.
“It will make the Middle East a nuclear tinderbox. It will
change the world. We’ve not seen anything like it. We’ve not seen since the
advent of nuclear weapons a power that could contemplate using those weapons
with happy abandon – they say so. Nobody has said so since the Cuban missile
crisis, over a half a century ago,” Netanyahu said.
But Iran, the prime
minister, said was not the only threat in the unstable region.
Syria has
“the most lethal weapons on earth, short of nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said,
which includes chemical weapons and advanced antiaircraft missile
systems.
“Those weapons will be up for grabs if the Syrian regime
collapses,” he said. “Israel can’t sit idly by and see these weapons transferred
to Hezbollah or other terror groups. So we will do whatever is necessary to
defend ourselves.”
Aside from Israel’s physical threats, it also faces
the danger of delegitimization from those who want to eliminate the Jewish
nation, Netanyahu said.
Hatred of Jews, which was politically improper
after the Holocaust, has returned “in the renascent Islamist anti- Semitism” and
“the anarchist left.”
Israel, Netanyahu said, is a “uniquely moral
country” which observes human rights, fights for democracy and the rights of
minorities.
“Yet, in spite of this, those who should know better have not
stood up for Israel,” Netanyahu said. “The delegitimization of Israel in the
face of the attempts to actually destroy it one of the great moral failures of
our time.”
Reuters contributed to this report