Prime minister makes address to Congress despite opposition from the White House; says days are over when Jews remain passive in face of genocidal enemy.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the US Congress on Tuesday, saying that the current deal being formulated by the P5+1 group of world powers and Tehran would inevitably lead to a nuclear Iran and war.
The US has said over the past year that no deal with Iran is better than a bad deal, Netanyahu told the assembled American lawmakers."Well this is a bad deal. A very bad deal."
Netanyahu said that the alternative to this deal was not war, as some have posited, "but a better deal."
"The days of the Jewish people remaining passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over! " Netanyahu said to rousing applause.
The Israeli leader said that the Western powers\’ emerging deal with Iran would all but guarantee that Tehran gets nuclear weapons.
Any deal would include concessions that would leave Iran with a vast nuclear infrastructure, he said. "Not a single nuclear facility would be demolished," according to the terms of the deal, Netanyahu added.
Their breakout time would be a year by US assessments and even shorter by Israeli assessments, he said.
He said that nuclear inspectors in North Korea had not been able to stop Pyongyang from getting nuclear weapons and they would not be able to stop Tehran either.
Netanyahu said that sanctions against Iran should not be lifted until Tehran stops aggression against its neighbors in the Middle East, stops supporting terrorism around the world and stops threatening to annihilate Israel, "the one and only Jewish state."