Benjamin Netayahu Tells American Jewish Leaders Iran Is Nearing Nuclear ‘Red Line’
Addressing a delegation from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the Iranian nuclear threat and said he looked forward to President Obama’s upcoming Israel trip.
In the Monday night speech, Netanyahu also reaffirmed his commitment to a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
The prime minister said that Iran had yet to cross the “red line” in its nuclear fuel enrichment that would necessitate an attack on its enrichment facilities, but that Iran is working to “shorten the time it will take them to cross that line.”
“This has to be stopped in the interests of peace and security,” he said. “You have to upgrade the sanctions, and we have to know if sanctions and diplomacy fail, that [Iran] will face a credible military threat.”
Aside from Iran, Netanyahu said the two major security threats Israel faces are from the stockpile of chemical weapons in Syria, which could fall into the hands of terrorists, as well as the ongoing diplomatic stalemate with the Palestinians.
He called for “two states for two peoples – a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state. I think to reach this solution we have to negotiate in good faith. Negotiating in good faith means you don’t place preconditions.”
Netayahu said that Obama’s visit, scheduled for March, is “a wonderful opportunity to reaffirm the strategic relationship between Israel and the United States.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
