Netanyahu to Greek FM: Your visit during crisis, shows will to strengthen Israel ties

PM says events in Vienna on Iran's nuclear program represent a "breakdown," not a "breakthrough."

By HERB KEINON
Updated: JULY 6, 2015 15:43
Netanyahu to Greek FM: Your visit during crisis, shows will to strengthen Israel ties
Before a meeting in Jerusalem with visiting Greek foreign Minister Nikos Kostias on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he appreciated that the foreign minister went ahead with a three-day trip to Israel, his first visit to Israel since assuming his role in January, “despite some rather dramatic events in your country.”
What this demonstrates, Netanyahu said, “was the real commitment we have to strengthen the friendship between our two countries.” That relationship has dramatically improved over the past five years.
Kotzias told Netanyahu that when he sees Israelis visiting Greece, he is struck that they “love Greece so much. We have to love Israel the same way,” he said.
As he now does at every photo opportunity with a visiting statesmen, Netanyahu on Monday railed against the Iranian nuclear deal being negotiated in Vienna.
Netanyahu, who said Iran was the world's leading sponsor of terrorism, asserted that almost everyday there are more concessions by the world powers – the US, Russia, China, Germany, Britain and France – toward Iran.
“I can say that what we see in Vienna is not a breakthrough, but more of a breakdown of the principles that the P5+1 committed itself to in the Lausanne negotiations,” he said, referring to the framework deal signed in April in Lausanne.
“This deal will pave Iran's path to a nuclear arsenal, it will give them a jackpot of hundreds of millions of dollars with which to continue fund their aggression and terror. Aggression in the region, terror throughout the world,” he said, repeating his objections to the deal.
He said that it was preferable to have no deal, then this very bad one.
Saying that Israel and Greece were allies in the fight against terrorism, Netanyahu reminded his guest that an Iranian-Hezbollah terror cell was recently discovered in Cyprus, where a terrorist was just sentenced to six years in prison for stockpiling tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer that can be used to make explosives. The amount of ammonium nitrate found, he said, was the same amount that was used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
Netanyahu also mentioned reports of an Iranian backed cell recently uncovered in Jordan.