Netanyahu on Iran: We will not let them get nuclear arms

Netanyahu's comments were Israel's first response to Iran's announcement that it will continue its nuclear program.

By HERB KEINON
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the government's central Remembrance Day ceremony at the Mount Herzl military cemetery on May 8th, 2019 (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the government's central Remembrance Day ceremony at the Mount Herzl military cemetery on May 8th, 2019
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Israel will not let Iran attain nuclear weapons, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday just hours after Iran announced that it will continue its nuclear program.
Netanyahu's comments came at the government's central Remembrance Day ceremony at the Mount Herzl military cemetery honoring the country's 23,741 fallen soldiers.
“This morning, on my way here, I heard that Iran intends to continue its nuclear program. We will not let Iran get nuclear weapons,” he said. “We will continue to fight our enemies, and will strike our roots even deeper in our homeland. That is what our heroes did at the dawn of the nations' rebirth, and we march in their path.”
Referring to the flare up in the south over the weekend that led to the killing of four Israelis as some 700 rockets pounded the south from the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu said, “The events of the last few days show clearly what our struggle is about – about the efforts of those who seek our harm, who want to destroy our country and uproot us from our land.”
Israel's enemies have tried to do this time after time, Netanyahu said, “but they failed.”
Referring at the start of his brief comments to the repatriation of the remains of Zachary Baumel to Israel 37 years after he fell in battle in Lebanon, Netanyahu said his burial on Mount Herzl shows that “our wonderful nation again proved that after dozens of years, it does not forget its sons.”
“When I thanked President [Vladimir] Putin in Russia for his help in locating Zachary, I told him and the heads of his army that for us this brotherhood of fighters is a supreme value,” Netanyahu recalled. “I saw the admiration in their eyes. And this is the most important significance of this holy day. It is a day of heavy grief, but also a day of tremendous brotherhood, a day when all of us feel like family.”