Israel, he declared, would defend itself “with all the means at our disposal.”
These words still reverberate in Israel today, and they help explain why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is flying to Washington next week to give a controversial speech before Congress on Iran.
Netanyahu wants to thwart a nuclear deal world powers are hammering out with Tehran, a deal that his government believes will leave Iran with the means to potentially develop a nuclear weapon — and leave him with the same choice Begin faced more than three decades ago.
“This is the primary Israeli fear,” said Ronen Bergman, military and intelligence analyst for the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. “They are afraid at the end of the day, if negotiations fail, Israel would be left alone to make the call — whether to contain an Iranian nuclear capability or to make the call on the strike.”
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While the United States has long pledged to safeguard Israel’s security, Israeli leaders now fear the easing in relations between the United States and Iran following the election of President Hasan Rouhani has clouded the Obama administration’s judgment. And the U.S.-Iran thaw has come at the same time that tensions between Obama and Netanyahu have escalated.
“The sense in Israel, and it goes way beyond Netanyahu, is that the president underestimates Iran’s duplicity, underestimates Iran’s ruthlessness, the religious imperative behind its ideology,” said David Horovitz, editor of the Times of Israel news website.
In addressing Congress next week, aides say that Prime Minister Netanyahu feels compelled to warn the U.S. and the world that, in his view, beneath its friendly new image, Iran is still intent on wiping Israel off the map.
“I think that he feels fated that he is leading the Jewish people when it potentially faces a genocidal threat,” Horovitz said. “That is the Netanyahu mindset — that people are in peril, and he needs to stand firm and say what he wants to say and if necessary take the step that needs to be taken.”
