A year after the P5+1 – which consists of the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain plus Germany – signed a nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the dispute between Israel and the US administration on that issue has yet to end. Following remarks made by US President Barack Obama, in which the American leader said that even Israel, which had opposed the nuclear agreement with Iran more than any other country, recognized that the Iranians were keeping the accord; Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman released a statement in which he compared the nuclear agreement with Iran to the Munich agreement with Nazi Germany.
The Defense Ministry’s statement reads: “The Israeli security establishment believes that agreements have value only when they are based on reality, and have no value when the facts on the ground totally contradict those on which the agreement rests. The Munich agreement did not prevent World War II and the Holocaust, because the world leaders at the time ignored the explicit statements made by Hitler and the rest of the leadership of Nazi Germany. This is also true of Iran, which openly and explicitly declares that its goal is to destroy the State of Israel. Not only do agreements like the one that the P5+1 signed with Iran not help, they only cause damage to the uncompromising battle that must be waged against a terrorist state like Iran.”
Even though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement on Friday night, in which he said that Israel’s stance on the nuclear agreement with Iran was unchanged, and that both the supporters and opponents of the agreement had to cooperate in order to ensure that Iran did not violate the agreement, contend with its aggression in the region, and dismantle its global terrorist network; officials in the Prime Minister’s Bureau said they had no advance knowledge of the Defense Ministry’s intention to issue the statement. Top officials from the Prime Minister’s Bureau reportedly called US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro so as to provide clarifications after which they issued a statement in an attempt at damage control, emphasizing that Prime Minister Netanyahu strongly believes that Israel has no greater ally than the United States.