Iran's ayatollahs are planning a new "genocide" against the Jewish people, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says.
During a speech Tuesday on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a defiant prime minister said it was his duty to "ensure that the State of Israel will never again be threatened with destruction," warning that's exactly what would happen under an agreement being negotiated with Iran by the United States and four other world powers,
the Times of Israel reports.
"The pending agreement with Iran is an agreement that endangers the State of Israel," he declared. "It leaves Iran with the capabilities that will allow it to arm itself with nuclear weapons, one bomb at first and afterwards many atomic bombs. We cannot live with such an agreement."
Netanyahu said Israel would "reject any agreement that leaves Iran as a nuclear threshold state."
"The ayatollahs in Iran, they deny the Holocaust while planning another genocide against our people," he said. "The Jewish people will defend itself by itself against any threat. That’s what the Jewish state is all about."
Netanyahu's remarks come ahead of his planned March 3 address to Congress – two weeks before Israeli elections.
The invite has irked the Obama administration.
The prime minister is expected to urge U.S. lawmakers to hit Iran
with a new round of economic sanctions, though President Barack Obama vows to veto any bill increasing sanctions while nuclear talks are underway.
Netanyahu also decried the resurgence of anti-Semitism around the world, and blasted the "obsession with the Jewish people and their state," The Times of Israel reports.
"Some things just don’t change. But I can tell you today what has changed.We have changed. … We are no longer a stateless people endlessly searching for a safe haven. We are no longer a powerless people begging others to protect us.
"Today we are an independent and sovereign people in our ancestral homeland. Today we can speak out against the hateful voices of those seeking our destruction. Today we can protect ourselves and defend our freedom."
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