Itongadol.- Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu arrived in Rome on Tuesday to urge Italy and the US to continue to impose sanctions against Iran as the best path to peacefully disarm Tehran’s nuclear weapons program.
“We must ensure that Iran won’t have nuclear weapons capabilities and that this can be achieved peacefully,” Netanyahu told his Italian counterpart Enrico Letta during a Tuesday night meeting in Rome.
He is likely to repeat this message when he meets Wednesday with US Secretary of State John Kerry. The two men will also discuss the Israeli Palestinian peace process.
“Iran says it wants a deal that will allow for civilian nuclear energy, but that is not the real issue,” Netanyahu said.
“Many countries in Europe, North America, Asia, have nuclear power programs with centrifuges or plutonium,” he said. “The only reason Iran has insisted on centrifuges and plutonium is to allow it to produce enough material for a nuclear bomb.” The United Nations Security Council has passed resolutions, including one in 2010, that called on Iran to dismantle its centrifuges and to stop the production of plutonium, Netanyahu said.
“If Iran retains these capabilities, it can move quickly to produce a [nuclear] bomb,” Netanyahu said. “We can’t allow them to do this.”