NEW YORK: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised US President Donald Trump’s speech at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, in which the American blasted Iran and North Korea, calling it the most “courageous speech” he had ever heard at the world body.
“In over 30 years of my experience with the UN, I never heard a bolder or more courageous speech,” Netanyahu said in a statement after the speech. “President Trump spoke the truth about the great dangers facing our world, and issued a powerful call to confront them in order to ensure the future of humanity.”
Netanyahu, who, in attendance at Trump’s speech along with his wife Sara, applauded enthusiastically at turns. He is set to speak at the UN later Tuesday in an address expected to include a scathing rebuke of the Iran nuclear deal and Tehran’s support for terror groups.
In a video filmed at the UN ahead of his speech and posted on social media, Netanyahu said his speech would not be one the Iranians will soon forget.
“Today I will say things that I believe the ruler of Iran and also the people in Iran will remember forever,” he said in Hebrew. “I think they will also remember what President Trump said here.”
While refraining from calling to rip up 2015 agreement, which placed limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief and which Trump said Monday that the US may scrap, the US president said, “We cannot abide by an agreement if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear program.”
“The Iran deal is one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the US has ever entered into. Frankly, that deal was an embarrassment to the US,” he added, echoing previous criticism of the deal.
Netanyahu, who has called for Iran deal to be amended or scrapped, said he presented Trump with a detailed plan on how to “fix” the nuclear agreement with Iran during a meeting Monday.
In addition to criticising the Iran nuclear deal, Netanyahu called for rolling back “Iran’s growing aggression in the region, especially in Syria,” in a joint press conference with Trump ahead of their meeting.
In his speech at the UN, Trump addressed Iran’s regional military expansion, accusing the Islamic Republic of exporting “violence, bloodshed and chaos” throughout the Middle East through its funding of terror groups that threaten Israel and Arab countries.
“Rather than use its resources to improve Iranian lives, its oil profits go to Hezbollah and other terror groups that kill innocent Muslims and attack their Arab and Israeli neighbors,” he said, while adding that Iranian funds also “shore up [Syrian President] Bashar Assad’s dictatorship, fuel Yemen’s civil war and undermine peace in the entire Middle East.”
“Iran’s government must stop funding terrorists,” he said, calling the regime in Tehran “murderous.”
While Trump also addressed a number of other major international concerns, namely North Korea’s nuclear program under “rocket man” Kim Jong-Un, he noticeably made no mention of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and attempts to reach a peace agreement.
Speaking alongside Netanyahu on Monday, Trump had reiterated his desire to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, telling the visiting Israeli prime minister there was a “good chance” such an accord could happen.
“We’re going to be discussing many things, among them peace between the Palestinians and Israel,” Trump told reporters while sitting alongside Netanyahu at the New York Palace Hotel. “It would be a fantastic achievement. We’re giving it an absolute go. I think there’s a good chance that it could happen.”
Netanyahu, for his part, said the two would discuss how “we can seize the opportunity for peace between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel and the Arab world. I think these things go together.”
