Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired back at Iran on Monday after its foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, claimed the Israeli leader had threatened to destroy his country and warned that the Islamic Republic would respond to such threats.
“Zarif is once again lying,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “Iran is the one openly threatening destruction. The regime’s officials threaten the destruction of Israel on a daily basis.”
He said Iran was “attempting to establish itself militarily in Syria, and just today it was publicized that it is accelerating its nuclear program.
“I’ll say it again: We won’t allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons that will endanger us and the entire world,” he said.
At a press conference in Tehran alongside visiting German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, Zarif had said “Netanyahu stands next to the Dimona [reactor], a nuclear weapons site, and says Iran should be destroyed…Of course, no one can act against our people without receiving a decisive response.”
Israel has long maintained an official position of ambiguity with regards to its nuclear capabilities.
According to Iran’s Tasnim news agency, which provided an English translation of his remarks, Zarif was referring to comments Netanyahu made in August 2018 during a visit to Israel’s secretive nuclear site in Dimona.
At the time Netanyahu warned that those who seek to destroy Israel put themselves in danger of suffering the same fate instead.
The Iranian regime routinely threatens and anticipates the destruction of Israel, and funds and arms anti-Israel terrorist groups in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, frequently refers to Israel as a cancer that must be eradicated, and has set out detailed plans for its elimination.
Israel has repeatedly warned that Iran is seeking a nuclear arsenal in order to destroy it, and Netanyahu has led international opposition to the 2015 P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran.
“Iran has never waged a war against any country and will not do so in future,” Zarif said Monday, but warned that “if any country starts a war on Iran, it would definitely not be the one that ends it.”
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