Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres once again highlighted the difference in their positions on the Iranian nuclear threat, as they commented on feedback from last week’s talks between western negotiators and Iran in Kazakhstan, over the Islamist regime’s nuclear weapons programme.
After the US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, who headed America’s negotiations team in Almaty, met with the Israeli leadership last week to report back on the P5+1’s progress, ahead of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry’s arrival in the Jewish State later this month, Netanyahu revealed his "impression from these talks is that the only thing that was achieved was to stall for time during which Iran intends to continue enriching nuclear materia for an atomic bomb."
“Our enemies are uniting in order to bring about not only atomic weapons that could be used against us, but other deadly weapons that are piling up around us,” he cautioned at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday, as he called on the international community to likewise “come together and unite our forces in order to repel these dangers”.
Peres, by contrast, once more sought to highlight his faith in Obama, as he insisted Thursday he remains “convinced that President Obama will do all he can to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and that under his leadership the American administration will not cease in their attempts to find a solution to the Iranian threat”.
Returning the sentiment, following Peres’ visit to Washington last May where he received the high-profile Presidential Medal of Freedom from his US counterpart, Sherman responded that “America has no better friend than you”.
Last August Peres provoked controversy when he insisted Israel “cannot go it alone” in pre-emptively striking Iran over its contentious nuclear weapons programme prompted criticism from Netanyahu aides that he had “forgotten what the president’s role is”. His implication was that Israel needed the support of close ally the US to take decisive action on Iran.
He threatened to further add fuel to the fire of reported tensions with Netanyahu over Iran in January, when he told US daily The New York Times that “Israel cannot solve the problem alone”.
However, when questioned on Israel’s policy regarding the Iranian threat, Peres insisted he was “not the spokesman” for Netanyahu or his government. “That’s not my job. I am not looking for confrontations with them,” he added, as he expressed his view that the US, whilst exploring all available diplomatic and non-military options in the first hand, “but in the end, if none of this works, then President Obama will use military power against Iran”.
Stressing to Sherman last week his belief that “a nuclear Iran is an existential threat for peace in the world and not just Israel”, he highlighted widespread human rights concerns regarding the Islamist regime in the wake of the newly published report by the UN Human Rights Council on its myriad violations of international human rights laws, as he reiterated:
"I have total faith in the Obama administration in its commitment and its actions in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and I believe that President Obama stands behind his promise on the Iranian threat."
Sherman’s immediate visit to Israel following the two day nuclear talks which concluded Wednesday highlights the emphasis the Iranian issue is being paid on the agenda for Obama’s forthcoming visit to the Jewish State, his first since entering office in 2008.
In an address to the Jewish Agency’s Board of Directors last month, Netanyahu said that the Iranian threat would inevitably dominate discussions with Obama during the course of his visit beginning March 20, as “stopping Iran is the number one goal of anyone seeking peace and security in the world”.
Describing Israel as “a uniquely moral country and the only country that observes human rights and fights for democracy”, he said that Iran had been clear that its nuclear aspirations were being explored with the sole intention of “destroying the Jewish State”, as he insisted that denying Israel’s right to exist was “nothing short of an effort to eradicate the Jewish State, and we should be clear about that, that it is spearheaded first by Iran”.