Special to WorldTribune.com

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the United States for its numerous concessions to Iran in nuclear negotiations, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said that Israel is prepared to “defend ourselves, by ourselves.”

At a July 12 Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu blasted the imminent deal and noted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s comments that the U.S. would remain an enemy of Iran.

“Iran’s supreme leader, [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei, said that Iran should still fight the United States even if there is an agreement,” Netanyahu said. “The President of Iran, [Hassan] Rouhani, stands at the head of the march of hatred in the streets of Teheran, in which U.S. and Israeli flags were burned, and in which many chanted ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel.’ ”

“All of this is happening as the parade of concessions to Iran continues in Vienna, even concessions on issues that have been marked as red lines during the talks in Lausanne. This march of giving concessions to Iran will feed hundreds of billions of dollars to its terror machine.”

Ya’alon told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on July 13 that “at the bottom line, we are headed toward a bad deal, after which we will continue to be ready to defend ourselves, by ourselves.”

“The agreement in effect launders everything that Iran has done … Neighboring countries are now talking about their own need to arm themselves, which could spark a nuclear arms race in the region. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey are talking about it. Not to mention the fact that the agreement doesn’t require [Iran] to decommission even a single nuclear facility or destroy even a single centrifuge.”

Netanyahu added that the nuclear deal is essentially “endangering the peace of the entire world. Iran does not hide its intention to continue its murderous aggression even against those with whom it is negotiating. Perhaps there is someone among the great powers who is prepared to capitulate to this reality that Iran is dictating, which includes its unending calls for the destruction of Israel – we will not pay the price for this.”

Ya’alon outlined issues that he said “should not only alarm us (Israelis), but anyone who seeks stability in the Middle East and in the world: the fact that the Iranian missile project was not discussed or that the Iranian terrorist activity — activity directed against us like their support for Hezbollah — was not discussed; the funding of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza; the dissemination of rocket manufacturing instructions, or the attempt to launch attacks on us from the Golan Heights, as we saw at the beginning of the year.”

  Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel warns lifting sanctions will fund terror proxies, Moshe Ya’alon, P5+1 negotiations, WorldTribune.com