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Opposition leader MK Benjamin Netanyahu

Netanyahu Warns US Congress Members: No Accord Will Stop Iran’s Nuclear Program

Opposition leader MK Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of visiting members of the US House of Representatives that no signed agreement would ever stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, and insisted that only stiff sanctions and military action would be effective.

Dozens of Congress members from both the Republican and Democratic parties are in Israel this week, meeting with local officials on a trip organized by the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation.

Western officials have indicated that negotiations between world powers and Iran to restore the faltering 2015 nuclear deal could produce an agreement within days. The so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has unraveled since the US unilaterally pulled out of it in 2018, in a move supported by Israel when Netanyahu was still prime minister.

Netanyahu told the US lawmakers on Monday, February 21, that history has shown that other countries in the region seeking nuclear weapons were only stopped when Israel took military action and bombed reactor sites before they became operational, citing the attacks on Iraq’s reactor in 1981 and a Syrian reactor in 2007.

“The way to stop the arming of such regimes with military weapons is not, then, through agreements. It is important to understand that it just does not work,” Netanyahu said.

“The only thing that has worked in the past is one of two things or both: either crippling sanctions or a credible military response or both — preferably both,” he said. “Nothing else has worked and in my judgment, nothing else can work.” (TOI / VFI News)

“God, we pray that You would stop Iran in their tracks and keep them from destroying Israel and being a threat to the world.”