Benjamin Netanyahu: Iran must recog

Benjamin Netanyahu: Iran must recognise Israel
Israeli leader opens new front against nuclear deal by demanding that it be conditioned on Tehran's Islamic rulers dropping their decades-long refusal to recognise Israel

Benjamin Netanyahu intensified his efforts to torpedo the emerging nuclear agreement with Iran on Friday by demanding that it be made dependent on Tehran explicitly recognising Israel's right to exist.
Having already denounced the framework settlement drawn up in Lausanne as a threat to Israel's survival, the Israeli prime minister opened up a new front by stipulating a condition that experts described as an attempt at a deal breaker.
"Israel demands that any final agreement with Iran will include a clear and unambiguous Iranian recognition of Israel's right to exist," Mr Netanyahu said after a meeting of Israel's security cabinet, where ministers declared they were unanimously opposed to the agreement.
The demand amounted to a full-frontal challenge to Iran's flagship policy of refusing to recognise Israel, which was one of the key ideological pillars of the 1979 Islamic revolution which toppled the monarchy of the Western-backed shah.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's firebrand former president, provoked international outrage when he called for Israel to be "erased from the pages of time" and frequently forecast its demise.
Hassan Rouhani, his pragmatic successor, has adopted a more moderate tone but has signaled no intention to recognise Israel - something analysts said would be politically impossible and was being proposed by Mr Netanyahu in an effort to sabotage the agreement.
"It's an impossible proposition and anyone putting that on the table is trying to torpedo the whole understanding," said Houshang Amirahmadi, president of the American-Iran council and a former Iranian presidential candidate. "The two sides are enemies and the Islamic Republic will never recognise Israel.
"At best, it could have the same position as Saudi Arabia [which does not recognise Israel but maintains discreet contacts]. Knowing Iran and the people out there, it's not only Israel - they have a hard time recognising the United States of America."
Professor Uzi Rabi, an Iran specialist at Tel Aviv university, said Mr Netanyahu's gambit was unlikely to persuade the US or other Western countries.
"Netanyahu is trying to come up with a litmus test to show the world that Iran doesn't mean business and that we're dealing with the same old Iran," he said. "But I don't think this is going to be effective in making the West have second thoughts. He is speaking the language of the 20th century, which isn't valid any more.
"The Iranians, at least not Rouhani, are not going to repeat what Ahamdinejad said but they're not going to say the opposite either, because they are going to connect it to the issue of Palestine."
Mr Netanyahu bluntly told President Barack Obama he was "vehemently opposed" to the framework agreement in a late night telephone conversation hours after it was announced.
He expanded on his objections on Friday, referring to a comments attributed to Mohammed Reza Naghdi, a hard-line commander of Iran's volunteer Basij militia, who was quoted as saying this week Israel's destruction was "non-negotiable".
"I want to make clear to all. The survival of Israel is non-negotiable," Mr Netanyahu said.
He said the agreement "would not shut down a single nuclear facility in Iran" but would "legitimise Iran's illegal nuclear programme".
"The deal would lift sanctions almost immediately and this at the very time that Iran is stepping up its aggression and terror in the region and beyond the region," Mr Netanyahu said.
"In a few years, the deal would remove the restrictions on Iran's nuclear program, enabling Iran to have a massive enrichment capacity that it could use to produce many nuclear bombs within a matter of months."
White House spokesman Eric Schultz said he had not seen the specific request but was aware of Israel's ongoing concerns.
"We understand his position," Mr Schultz told reporters aboard Air Force One. "The president would never sign onto a deal that he felt was a threat to the state of Israel."