Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Iran’s tweeted call for the outright destruction of the Jewish nation throws quite a wrench in discussions about Tehran’s nuclear development — and that the Twitter message ought to serve as a warning to the international community.
“There is no moderation in Iran,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement, CNN reported. “It is unrepentant, unreformed. It calls for Israel’s eradication. It promotes international terrorism.”
And his main take-away from the tweet that he wants the international community to realize?
“This terrorist regime in Iran must not be allowed to become a nuclear threshold power,” Mr. Netanyahu said, CNN reported. “And I call on the P5+1 countries — don’t rush into a deal that would let Iran rush to the bomb.”
The P5+1, or permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus one, includes the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France, plus Germany.
The at-issue tweet was sent out by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over the weekend. In it, he called for Israel to be “annihilated.” At the same time, he also said he doesn’t support a “massacre of the Jewish people in this region,” but rather a referendum to disband the state of Israel, CNN reported. Still, “armed resistance is the cure” for the here and now question of what to do with Israel, and the West Bank Palestinians ought to be “armed like Gaza,” he said, in the series of tweets, CNN reported.
Mr. Khamenei also wrote in a paper that he tweeted out that the “proper way of eliminating Israel [is for] all the original people of Palestine, including Muslims, Christians and Jews wherever they are, whether inside Palestine, in refugee camps in other countries or just anywhere else, take part in a public and organized referendum,” CNN reported. He specified: “The Jewish immigrants who have been persuaded into emigration to Palestine do not have the right to take part.”
Iran has insisted for years its nuclear program is for peaceable purposes only, and that the nation is not trying to develop weaponry.
Meanwhile, vice president Joe Biden vowed on Monday that the United States “will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon, period,” he said, CNN reported.
The current negotiations among P5+1 nations are due to wrap on Nov. 24.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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