To imagine what the world would look like if Iran had nuclear bombs, one only needs to think about what Islamic State (ISIS) does with guns and trucks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.
He spoke on the CBS program Face the Nation, as part of the public relations offensive he has embarked on ahead of the November 24th deadline for the six world powers to reach an agreement with Iran to halt its nuclear program.
Netanyahu is worried that the six powers prefer to reach a bad deal than to walk away from the talks without any agreement.
He has urged them not to make a deal with Iran at any cost and has argued that a stiff sanctions regime can offer a viable alternative to a bad deal.
“Look at what ISIS is doing now with assault rifles and pickup trucks. Just imagine what Iran would do if it had nuclear weapons,” he told CBS.
“I think it's important to continue the sanctions. The alternative to a bad deal is not war. The alternative to a bad deal are more sanctions, tougher sanctions, that will make Iran dismantle its capacity to make nuclear bombs,” Netanyahu said.
There are two groups of radical Islam militants fighting each other in the Middle East, he said. There is ISIS and al-Qaida on the Sunni side and Iran and Hezbollah on the Shi'ite side, Netanyahu said.
“We want both of them to lose. The last thing we want is to have any one of them get weapons of mass destruction,” Netanyahu said.
It’s a mistake to strengthen one enemy over the other, the prime minister added.
Israel stands with the US in its struggle against ISIS, Netanyahu said, but he warned that Iran was not an ally in that war.
“Iran is not your friend. Iran is your enemy. It’s not your partner. Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel,” he said.
While the US, along with Russia, China, France, Germany and Great Britain is negotiating with Iran, its supreme ruler Ayatollah Khamenei is participating in rallies with chants of “death to America,” Netanyahu said.
Khamenei is also calling for Israel’s destruction, Netanyahu said. “Four days ago, he specified nine ways and reasons by which Israel should be destroyed,” the prime minister said.
Both the US and Israel are committed to halting Iran’s nuclear program, but differ on their understanding of how that should happen. Israel fears that unless Iran is forced to dismantle the facilities it uses to enrich uranium, can become a nuclear threshold state, even with an agreement. The six powers, are working on the understanding the facilities can remain.
“I want to be clear what has to be achieved,” Netanyahu told Face the Nation. “It’s not merely preventing Iran from having nuclear weapons today, it’s to prevent them from having nuclear weapons tomorrow.
“That means that Iran should not be left with the residual capacity to enrich uranium that you need to have an atomic bomb, nor to have the long-range ballistic missiles -- the ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missile -- to launch them,” Netanyahu said.
Iran doesn’t need ballistic missiles to hit Israel, it wants them so it can use them against the US, Netanyahu warned.
He delivered this same message to German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier when the two met in Jerusalem on Sunday evening.
Steinmeier plans to meet with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss Iran.
Netanyahu told him, that a bad deal on Iran, “would also make it very difficult to achieve a diplomatic solution because Iran would have the capacity to break to a nuclear bomb or to sneak to a nuclear bomb within a matter of a few months or even less than that and that is something that would threaten everyone.”
He reminded him, that German and Europe as a whole was in danger from Iran’s long range missiles.
He repeated to Steinmeier the same message that he told Face the Nation, that he supports US President Barack Obama’s efforts to defeat ISIS.
Steinmeier assured him that if an agreement was reach between the six powers and Iran, it would not be a bad one.
“There will be a responsible agreement or no agreement,” said Steinmeier. He added that the two sides had not yes found common ground on all the issues.
“You know, on the working level we are not yet there, so therefore we are trying really hard to have an agreement that is very clear in this one and important issue: that Iran has not any access to nuclear weapons,” he said.

By TOVAH LAZAROFF