Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz clashed on Tuesday after the prime minister issued a veiled threat against the Biden administration's continued effort to return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
“Our greatest threat is the existential threat posed by Iran’s efforts to arm itself with nuclear weapons, whether to threaten us directly with atomic weapons, with the destruction of a small state, or to threaten us with tens of thousands of missiles or a great many missiles backed by a nuclear umbrella,” Netanyahu said at a ceremony for incoming Mossad Director David Barnea. “This is a threat against the continuation of the Zionist enterprise, and we must fight this threat relentlessly.”
Addressing the Mossad agents seated in front, he said: “All of you do this. We spoke yesterday about the actions that have been taken, and these actions must continue. I have said these things to my friend of 40 years, [US President] Joe Biden, and I told him, ‘With or without an agreement, we will continue to do everything in our power to prevent Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons.’”
Following Netanyahu’s veiled threat against the Biden administration’s policy of seeking to return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Gantz said differences should be resolved quietly and without unnecessarily “defiant rhetoric.”
“The US was and will continue to be Israel’s most important ally for maintaining security and its qualitative military superiority in the region,” said Gantz who is heading to Washington for high-level talks at the Pentagon this week. “The Biden administration is a true friend, and Israel has and will have no better partner than the US. Even if there are disagreements, they must be solved behind closed doors and not with defiant rhetoric that could harm Israel’s security.”
The US is meeting with other world powers and Iran in a fifth round of nuclear negotiations in Vienna.
“Iran is different from the other countries that have nuclear weapons today,” Netanyahu said. “Therefore, containment is not an option. If we need to choose – and I hope it will not happen – between friction with our great friend the US and getting rid of an existential threat, getting rid of an existential threat will prevail.”
This mission “first falls on all of you, on the political leadership of the State of Israel and on you, Dadi [Barnea’s nickname],” he said. “All of you must do everything – everything – to ensure that Iran will never arm itself with nuclear weapons.”
In his speech, Barnea minced no words regarding Iran, alluding to potential future assassinations of its nuclear scientists and attacks on its nuclear facilities.
“The Iranian [nuclear] program will continue to be met with the full power of the long arm of the Mossad,” he was quoted as saying by Yediot Aharonot. “We are very familiar with the different components of the nuclear program, and we are very familiar personally with the officials involved in it and also with the officials who direct them.”
“Iran is acting even at this very moment to realize its nuclear vision under international auspices,” he said. “Using the [nuclear] deal and without it, with lies and with concealment, Iran is more advanced than ever toward developing a weapon for genocidal destruction.”
The Mossad would undertake various operations and the use of advanced technologies – likely a reference to cyberattacks among other capabilities – to keep the Islamic Republic in check, Barnea said. Moreover, Israel would not be passive simply because the majority of the world was willing to look the other way on Iran’s nuclear program, he added.