Netanyahu: Fix Or Nix Iran Deal or World Faces Islamist Empire With Hundreds of Nukes

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel addresses the 72nd session of the United Natio
AP Photo/Mary Altaffer

TEL AVIV – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday that the “bad” Iranian nuclear deal’s “sunset clause” must be removed or else the world will face a “radical Islamist empire” armed with hundreds of nuclear bombs. 

“The Iranian nuclear deal not only doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb, but actually paves it, because the restrictions placed on Iran’s nuclear program have what’s called a sunset clause,” Netanyahu explained, adding that “in a few years, those restrictions will be automatically removed not by a change in Iran’s behavior … but by a mere change in the calendar.”

“I warned that when that sunset comes, a dark shadow will be cast over the entire Middle East and the world. Because Iran will then be free to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, placing it on the threshold of a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons,” the prime minister said.

“The greatest danger is that Iran will not be able to build a single bomb by breaking the deal. But they will able to build many nuclear bombs by keeping the deal!” he warned. “Imagine the danger of hundreds of nuclear weapons in the hands of a vast Islamist empire with the missiles to deliver them anywhere in the world.”

Netanyahu continued by reiterating his call to either fix or nix the deal, signed in 2015 under the Obama administration.

Scrapping it, he said, would mean “restoring massive pressure on Iran, including crippling sanctions until Iran fully dismantles its nuclear weapons program.”

Amending it would mean inspecting all of the Islamic Republic’s military and research facilities and penalizing Tehran over every minute violation of the deal.

“But above all, it means getting rid of the sunset clause,” he added.

Earlier in the address, Netanyahu praised President Donald Trump for “speaking the truth about Iran” and said that he agreed unequivocally with the U.S. president’s assertion that the nuclear deal was an “embarrassment.”

Netanyahu said that in all the years spent at the United Nations hearing speeches by heads of state “none were bolder, none were more courageous and forthright than the one delivered by President Trump today.”

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