Israel’s Defense Ministry Friday likened the Iran nuclear deal to the 1938 Munich agreement with Nazi Germany and slammed President Barack Obama for defending the accord with Tehran.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who was outspoken in trying to halt the deal – sought to soften the statement’s impact by stressing the strength of the US-Israeli relationship. “The Israeli defense establishment believes that agreements have value only if they are based on reality”. “The Munich Agreement didn’t prevent the Second World War and the Holocaust precisely because its basis, according to which Nazi Germany could be a partner for some sort of agreement, was flawed, and because the leaders of the world then ignored the explicit statements of [Adolf] Hitler and the rest of Nazi Germany’s leaders”, the ministry said.
Yet Speaker Paul Ryan told an audience at the American Israel Public Affairs conference that he would use any means possible not only to destroy the nuclear deal with Iran, but, even worse, to bring about a war with Iran.
Obama said in remarks on Thursday that the Iran deal is working and that “it’s the assessment of the Israeli military and intelligence community… that acknowledges this has been a game-changer”.
The security establishment, like the Israeli people and many others around the world, understands that agreements of this type between the world powers and Iran are not advantageous and only damage the uncompromising struggle that must be waged against terrorist states like Iran.
“They have no value if the facts on the ground are opposite to the ones the agreement is based on”, the statement read.
Iranian officials have complained that the U.S. has not lived up to the terms of the deal. Iran also has a history of supporting terror groups, which raises additional concerns if the country were to acquire nuclear weapons.
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And one Cabinet minister who is a top Netanyahu adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, insisted that not only is Israel not on board with the nuke deal, but rather “the opposite is the case” and that “all our worries… were justified”.
