Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday compared Iran’s violent and expansionist aspirations in the Middle East to the Nazi campaign to conquer Europe during World War II.
He excoriated the US-led world powers for capitulating to Iran, and allowing it to maintain key elements of its nuclear program in the deal currently being negotiated, even as Tehran seeks to acquire weapons of mass destruction and destroy the Jewish state.
World powers were “comatose” and “delusional” in the face of today’s Nazis, Iran, he charged.
“The main lesson of the Second World War, for democracies, is that they cannot turn a blind eye to tyrannical regimes,” Netanyahu said during a ceremony at the Yad Vashem museum to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“Appeasement towards these regimes increases their aggressiveness,” the Israeli leader continued. “If this aggressiveness is not curbed in time, humanity may find itself in far greater wars in the future.”
Netanyahu noted that “ahead of World War II, the world attempted to appease the Nazis. They wanted quiet at any price, and the terrible price did come.” Six million Jews were murdered, as were millions of others. The lesson was clear, he said: Only standing firm in the face of violent, tyrannical regimes could ensure the future of humanity. But that lesson, he said, had evidently been forgotten.
Just as the Nazis sought to destroy Europe, Netanyahu said, so does Iran seek to wreak havoc in the Middle East and beyond, and to annihilate Israel.
World leaders utter the words “Never again” but don’t mean them, he charged.
He said he wished he could believe that the world had learned the lesson of the incomprehensible horrors wrought by the Nazis, but that “the threats to humanity are multiplying.”
He cited the slaughters of innocents by Islamic extremists, and then focused heavily on Iran.
The prime minister asserted that the framework nuclear deal which was reached earlier this month between Iran and the P5+1 world powers proves that the international community has failed to learn the lessons of the Holocaust.
“The Iranian regime represses its people,” Netanyahu said, “and plunges the Middle East into a tide of blood and suffering.”
Just as the Nazis sought to destroy civilization, install the Aryan race and wipe out the Jewish people, he said, so too do the Iranians intend to take over this region and destroy the Jewish state.
Iran was following two paths, he said, seeking nuclear weapons and “exporting the Khomeini revolution to many lands via the massive use of terrorism and widespread conquest in the Middle East.”
“The danger is there for all to see… and yet the blindness is vast,” he asserted. “The West is capitulating in the face of Iran’s aggressive actions.”
“Iranian leaders are exporting death and destruction. The world is not listening to the calls in Iran urging Death to Israel, Death to America,” Netanyahu said.
Instead of demanding the significant rolling back of Iran’s facilities, and instead of conditioning the lifting of sanctions on the end of its aggression, “the world powers are withdrawing.”
The new deal leaves nuclear capabilities in the hands of a nation that says openly that it wants to kill Israel’s six million Jews, Netanyahu complained. The civilized world is “comatose, gripped by delusion,” he charged.
“The democratic states made a terrible mistake” when failing to confront the rise of Nazism, “and they’re making a terrible mistake now.”
The prime minister vowed to protect the Jewish state at all costs, even if no other nation stands by Israel’s side. “We’ll continue to insist on the truth, and to try to open the closed eyes,” he promised, predicting “testing times ahead.”
“Even if we are forced to stand alone, we will not falter,” he said. Israel’s leaders would “ensure our right and capacity and determination to defend ourselves.” While the Jews had no power 70 years ago, “today we can make ourselves heard and we are determined to ensure our existence and our future.”
Vowed Netanyahu: “We will not allow the State of Israel to become a passing phase in the history of our people.”
The Israeli army on Wednesday offered its first reaction to the Russian sale of an advanced air defense system to Iran, characterizing the S-300 missile system as an obstacle, but one that can be overcome.
“The S-300 is a challenge,” Brig. Gen. Lihu HaCohen, the commander of the Nevatim Air Base, told a group of reporters. “The Air Force is preparing for an array of scenarios, including with this system. In the event that it will need to provide a response, the Air Force will know how to respond to the challenge.”
Russia has promised the system to three states in the region – Iran, Syria and Egypt. It is unclear what model S-300 is being offered, but were it to be placed in Syria, on Israel’s border, it would represent a constant threat to aircraft in the center of the country.
IAF veterans suggested earlier this week that the arrival of the system in Iran would complicate any potential Israeli air strike against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities, but not seal the skies.
“If the Israeli Air Force had the ability to act against Iran’s nuclear facilities before the S-300, then it will have it afterward, too,” said retired IAF general Asaf Agmon, head of the Fischer Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies.
The acquisition, however, would force Israel to devote vast amounts of electronic warfare capacity against such a system and to invest in weapons that could combat it, further complicating any strike against Iran and, potentially, raising the toll in human life if such a strike were to be ordered.
Agmon said Iranian air defense teams have been training on the Russian system since the deal was initially made in 2007 and that, if it is delivered to Iran, it would take only weeks for it to be made operational.
Another concern, he said, is that once such a system has been passed on to Iran, it might be transferred to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces or those of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon.
HaCohen spoke as the IAF welcomed the arrival of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 demo flight simulator in Nevatim Air Base. The first pair of the next-generation jets are set to arrive in Israel in December 2016.
Steve Over, Director, F-35 International Business Development, said that the F-35 is equipped to handle advanced air defense systems.
“When developing the program, we took in consideration future threats such as the S-300 and developed technologies to deal with them,” he said in an email, noting the aircraft’s stealth and its
specially developed sensors, which are designed to pick up enemy radar.
specially developed sensors, which are designed to pick up enemy radar.
No comments:
Post a Comment