Bennett tells visiting Merkel: Iran closer than ever to nuclear weapon

During a special Sunday cabinet meeting attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that Iran’s nuclear program has reached its “most advanced point ever” and pledged that Israel would never let Tehran attain a nuclear weapon.

“A nuclear weapon in the hands of such a radical, violent regime will change the face of the region and of the world,” said Bennett at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. “For us, it is not a strategic problem. It is an existential problem.”

Bennett said that over the last three years, Iran has made “a giant leap forward in its ability to enrich uranium.”

“The world waits, the Iranians delay, and the centrifuges spin.”

Negotiators from the US and the European parties to the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal are still waiting for Iran’s hardline president Ebrahim Raisi to return to talks in Vienna, suspended since June.

Bennett also called on the ministers at the table to focus on key bilateral issues with Germany, including support for Holocaust survivors, strengthening economic ties, and deepening the people-to-people relationship.

“I want to take this opportunity to express to you Israel’s deep appreciation of you standing beside us over the years, in words, and more importantly, in actions,” Bennett said to Merkel in conclusion.

Merkel joined the celebratory weekly cabinet meeting after a one-on-one meeting with Bennett, and the two are slated to hold a joint press conference afterward.

There were no plans for Merkel to meet former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now Israel’s opposition leader. She also was not scheduled to meet with Palestinian leaders in the West Bank.

Merkel, who is currently leading a caretaker government following national elections until a new government is formed, will also visit Yad Vashem and meet Israeli high-tech leaders and entrepreneurs.

The 67-year-old trained physicist is also to receive an honorary doctorate from Haifa’s Technion — Israel Institute of Technology.

At a joint statement Sunday morning before their private meeting, Bennett called Merkel “a dear friend of Israel,” and insisted that under Germany’s outgoing leader, ties between the two nations are ties were stronger than they had ever been.

“We are looking forward to strengthening them even more, in business, science, education, health, and of course in security,” said Bennett.

Bennett did not mention the Holocaust explicitly during the initial joint statements at the King David Hotel, but did say that “we certainly remember history, and look with optimism toward a better future.”

Bennett added that Merkel’s leadership has “paved the way for Germany’s continuing commitment to Israel’s security, which we value greatly.”

As he often does, Bennett spoke about the makeup of his ideologically unwieldy coalition, calling it “the most diverse government in Israel’s history.”

“We have right and left, Jews and Muslims, religious and secular, and it works. We are getting along together quite well,” he said.

Bennett also noted that there were eight female ministers — the most ever in an Israeli government — adding: “I think that this is one of the reasons it works well.”

Merkel responded by highlighting the work during her 16-year tenure to strengthen the bilateral relationship and ensure Israel’s security.

“I want to use this opportunity to emphasize that the topic of Israel’s security will always be of central importance and a central topic of every German government,” Merkel emphasized.

Turning to the Holocaust, she said she considers it “a stroke of good fortune given to us by history that after the crimes against humanity of the Shoah, it has been possible to reset and to reestablish relations between Germany and Israel to the extent that we have done.”

She also referenced Bennett’s coalition and the ongoing negotiations in Germany for the formation of a government in the wake of recent elections, saying that “compared with your government, a German coalition government seems a very simple matter.”

The chancellor was originally slated to visit Israel in late August, but canceled amid the upheaval surrounding the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Kabul airport attack. Germany was among the countries scrambling to evacuate from Kabul their own nationals and Afghans who helped their forces during a nearly two-decade deployment in the country.

AFP contributed to this report.