Parting company with Obama
Published by Avi Green on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 8:13 AM.
Power Line said recently that Benjamin Netanyahu should part company with Barack Obama. When it comes to the subject of Iran, you could say that in a way, he did:
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in his second public pronouncement on Iran is as many days, was quoted in a German newspaper Monday as saying that friendly relations could be established with Iran if there were a regime change.Netanyahu has certainly gone one up on Obama, who, while he has spoken on the issue of Iran's current self-savagery, has still avoided taking a solid stand.
In an interview published in the German newspaper Bild, Netanyahu - when asked whether a victory for Hossein Mussavi would be good news for Israel - replied: "What would be good news for Israel is a regime that stops crushing dissent, stops supporting terror and stops trying to build nuclear weapons.
"It would mean a regime that stops denying the Holocaust and stops threatening Israel with destruction," he said. "There is no conflict between the Iranian people and the people of Israel and under a different regime the friendly relations that prevailed in the past could be restored."
Israel and Iran enjoyed a friendly and constructive relationship prior to the overthrow of the Shah and establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
On Sunday, in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press," Netanyahu said that while Israel wanted a regime change, like most of the rest of the world, what was even more important was stopping Teheran's nuclear march.
Netanyahu, in his interview with Bild, said that he believed the protests, and the way the Iranian regime was suppressing them, had "unmasked" the true nature of the Iranian regime. Netanyahu said that if the Iranian people had a free choice, he had no doubt they would opt for a different government.
"What we have seen in Iran is a powerful desire on the part of the Iranian people to be free," he said. "Don't forget, Iranian elections are not like elections in Europe or Israel. First of all, the regime vets candidates. They eliminate those who are unacceptable to them in advance. This is a theocratic, totalitarian and brutal state that doesn't really give free choice to the Iranian people."
Labels: anti-semitism, iran, Israel, jihad, racism, terrorism, United States
