Itongadol.- Iran\’s nuclear march, not negotiations with the Palestinians, dominated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu\’s talks with world leaders in Davos, he told the cabinet Sunday, just hours after returning from the World Economic Forum in that Swiss city.
Netanyahu said that the most important thing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said during his speech to the conference was that Iran has not dismantled, and will not dismantle, a single centrifuge.
"If Iran will stand by that statement, that means that a permanent agreement – which is the goal of the entire diplomatic process with Iran – cannot succeed," Netanyahu said. "Iran is basically insisting on preserving its ability to get fissile material for a bomb without in any way extending the time-line to a nuclear break-out."
Netanyahu said that this meant that much of what Israel has warned against was indeed already taking place.
The prime minister said that Rouhani also tried in Davos to break the sanctions regime against his country. While praising US Secretary of State John Kerry for his statement that the US would act to preserve the existing sanctions, Netanyahu said the test will be in the results.
Netanyahu said Rouhani\’s speech, coupled by an interview given by his Foreign Minster Mohammad Javad Zarif, in which he declared that Iran has an ideological agenda that puts it in constant tension with the west and the US, caused the people he spoke with to understand that that situation with Iran is "not rosy."
"There is a problem here," Netanyahu said "We know the truth, that there is a regime which under the cover of a charm offensive is trying to arm itself with nuclear weapons, to become a [nuclear] threshold sate that can achieve nuclear weapons very fast, and a state that has not change at all its true ideology."
Netanyahu said that while there is an internal struggle taking place inside Iran for reform, there has been no change, neither in the country\’s goal of attaining nuclear weapons or in its aggressive policy and use of terrorism throughout the Middle East, and beyond.
In addition to meeting Kerry, among other leaders Netanyahu met in Davos were the presidents of Nigeria and Mexico, the prime ministers of Australia and Norway, and the foreign minister of China.