NETANYAHU HOPEFUL WORLD'S ATTITUDES TOWARD IRAN WILL CHANGE BECAUSE OF TRUMP
In a speech made at Yad Vashem a day prior to International Holocaust Memorial Day, Netanyahu addressed the Iranian threat and pointed to the new American president as a strong ally.
The world's view of Iran is likely to change with US President Donald Trump in the White House, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated on Thursday during a speech at Yad Vashem to the diplomatic corps.
The prime minister’s address marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day (which is commemorated around the world on January 27), said that even as antisemitism is on the rise in Europe, the greatest hatred of the Jewish people and the Jewish state comes from the East.
After Trump inauguration, Netanyahu wastes no time putting Iran back on agenda
“It comes from Iran,” he said. “It comes from the ayatollah regime that is fanning these flames and calling outright for the destruction of the Jewish state.”
This is the second time in a week that Netanyahu has made a public comment regarding the Iranian threat, after an extended period when this was not at the center of his remarks.
On Saturday night, just a day after Trump’s inauguration – and in what appeared to be an effort to put the issue back on the international agenda just as Trump took office – Netanyahu posted a video on social media saying he plans to speak with the new president “about how to counter the threat of the Iranian regime, which calls for Israel’s destruction.”
He picked up on this theme at Yad Vashem.
“I want you to think about a regime that openly declared its intention to eliminate every black person, every gay person, every European. I think the entire world would be outraged, and rightly so,” he said.
“But when a regime [Tehran] merely calls to wipe out every Israeli – which is what they say day in, day out, their most prominent leaders, they say it – what do we encounter? A deafening silence.”