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Netanyahu: Iranian Nuclear Deal "a Matter of Survival" for Israel


(CBS News) Bob Schieffer - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told "Face the Nation" on Sunday: I respect President Obama. I expressed appreciation in my speech in Congress, as I do now, for the many things that he's done for Israel. We share the same goal of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, but we disagree on how to do it. I do not trust inspections with totalitarian regimes. It didn't work with North Korea. It didn't work with Iran. Under the nose of inspectors, they built two underground bunkers that the inspectors didn't know about for years. What I'm suggesting is that you contract Iran's nuclear programs, so there's less to inspect. It's a matter of survival, really, for the State of Israel, for the security of the Middle East, for the security of the world, and also for the United States. The current proposal enables Iran to have a vast nuclear infrastructure, which means a very short breakout time to the bomb. The better deal is to increase the breakout time, to limit Iran's infrastructure, and to condition the lifting of restrictions on Iran's nuclear program to a change in Iran's behavior, to have it stop instigating aggression against its neighbors and stop threatening the annihilation of Israel. Schieffer: A Saudi newspaper, Al-Hayat, reported that the U.S. plans to offer some Arab states a so-called nuclear umbrella as protection against Iran. Netanyahu: If it's true, it raises two troubling questions. The first is, it means that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Otherwise, why offer Gulf states nuclear protection? And the second is, it signals a shift in U.S. policy from preventing a nuclear Iran to containing one.
2015-03-09 00:00:00
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