(CNSNews.com) – Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that while he is characterized as a “nuclear party pooper” for criticizing the Iran talks, Arab leaders in the region agree with him that the emerging agreement will not prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
“I’m often portrayed as the nuclear party pooper,” he told an international security conference in Herzliya, Israel. “And that would be okay if I was the only voice against the impending deal with Iran.
“But I speak with quite a few of our neighbors – more than you think – and I want to tell you that nobody in this region believes this deal will block Iran’s path to the bomb, or as they say, to many bombs."
With the exception of Egypt and Jordan, Israel does not have normal diplomatic ties with any Arab state, but shared concerns about a rising Iran have prompted behind-the-scenes engagement.
Last Thursday the incoming director-general of Israel’s foreign ministry, Dore Gold, and an outgoing senior Saudi official, Anwar Eshki, disclosed in Washington that bilateral dialogue has been underway for the past 18 months.
Iran and the P5+1 group – the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany – are working to finalize a comprehensive agreement, aimed at resolving a 13-year standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program, by a June 30 deadline.
In his address Netanyahu pointed out that no country in the region, apart from Iran, is participating in the talks.
“It’s worth noting that no-one from this region, except Iran, is at the negotiating table,” he said. “Somebody once said, ‘if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.’ The states with the most at stake are not even in the room.”
“To those who say this deal will change Iran, I say, you’ve got it backwards. First, Iran should change. Then make the deal.”
Netanyahu said the billions of dollars that will be released to Iran when the deal is implemented will be used to step up its sponsorship of terrorism, regional aggression, conventional arms buildup, cyber warfare program, and nuclear activities.
“I think there’s a belief that if Iran is more prosperous at home, it’ll be less aggressive abroad,” he said, describing that as “wishful thinking.”
“Iran can actually get the best of both worlds. Prosperity at home, aggression abroad.”
An Iran unshackled from the sanctions regime as a result of the emerging nuclear deal “will not just be a big threat to Israel it will be a great threat to its Arab neighbors as well,” he said.
Netanyahu said some would respond by pursuing nuclear weapons programs themselves, but he predicted that all of them will seek more advanced conventional weapons as well.
“So the deal that is supposed to address proliferation in one country will spark both a nuclear and a conventional arms race in many countries, in the most unstable part of the planet.”
Iranians ‘will invest in their surrogates’
Disagreements between the Israeli government and the Obama administration over the Iran negotiations have become increasingly evident in recent months.
Netanyahu said that despite such differences – which he stressed were aired “respectfully” – Israel has no better friend than America, and America has no better friend than Israel.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey acknowledged Tuesday that Iran would likely spend some of the money it gets from a suspension of sanctions on its military and sponsoring proxies abroad.
“If the deal is reached and results in sanctions relief, which results in more economic power and more purchasing power for the Iranian regime, it’s my expectation that it’s not all going to flow into the economy to improve the lot of the average Iranian citizen,” the Associated Press quoted him as saying during a visit to Jerusalem.
“I think they will invest in their surrogates,” Dempsey said, in an apparent reference to Shi’ite militias like Hezbollah and others in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. “I think they will invest in additional military capability.”
Dempsey did also say he believed a nuclear agreement would be of benefit to the region, AP reported.
“The long-term prospects seem to all of us, privately, that we are far better off with an Iran who is not a nuclear power than an Iran who is a nuclear power.”
Addressing the same conference in Herzliya as Netanyahu, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy also warned about the potential for a nuclear arms race in the region.
“This is exactly what we must stop at all costs,” he said. “If Iran has nuclear weapons, then maybe tomorrow Saudi Arabia and Turkey will want the same.”
France has been the P5+1 member most openly critical of the deal that is being negotiated with Iran. Sarkozy lost the presidency in 2012 to President Francois Hollande, a Socialist, but is expected to run again in the next election, in 2017.