Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona on Wednesday and warned that Israel has the means to destroy its enemies – a veiled reference to Israel's assumed nuclear arsenal.
"Those who threaten to wipe us out put themselves in a similar danger, and in any event will not achieve their goal," Netanyahu said during a ceremony to rename the complex after late Israeli President Shimon Peres.
Netanyahu's remarks came as Israel lobbies world powers to follow the United States' lead and withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
Israel says the agreement is insufficient to prevent Iran from eventually manufacturing a nuclear bomb.
Iran, a signatory of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, denies seeking nuclear weapons and claims its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
However, since its 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has called for Israel's destruction. It backs the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and has reinforced Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime during the seven-year Syrian civil war.
Earlier this week, Iran pledged to rebuild the Syrian army, something the Netanyahu government sees as further Iranian deployment on Israel's borders.
Israel, which is not a signatory to the NPT, maintains a policy of ambiguity with respect to its own nuclear capabilities. It says this policy keeps hostile neighbors in check while avoiding the kind of public provocations that can spark regional arms races.
The Israeli ambiguity has long been tolerated by Washington.
Speaking at the renaming ceremony on Wednesday, Netanyahu stressed that the Israel Defense Forces "will continue acting with full determination and with full force against Iran's attempts to deploy forces and advanced weapons systems in Syria."
Netanyahu said Peres, a former prime minister and Nobel Peace laureate who died in 2016, had set up the reactor in the 1950s as part of a vision of "normalization between key countries in the Arab world and a strong State of Israel."
"Shimon aspired toward peace but he knew that true peace can be achieved only if our hands strongly grasp defensive weaponry," Netanyahu continued.
"In the Middle East, and in many parts of the world, there is a simple truth: There is no room for the weak.
"The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history, while the strong, for better or worse, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end, peace is made with the strong.
"This process of normalization is happening before our eyes on a scale that would have been impossible to imagine just a few years ago. This process bears hope within it that, in the end, the cycle of peace will be completed. But it is impossible to deny the fact that there are still many enemies in this region and beyond," Netanyahu said.
"But our enemies know very well what Israel is capable of doing. They are familiar with our policy. Whoever threatens us with destruction puts himself in similar danger, and in any case will not achieve his goal.
"I am not spouting slogans. I am describing a persistent, clear and determined policy. This is our policy. It is backed by appropriate deployment, equipment, preparedness and – in the hour of need – appropriate orders.
"We are working to prevent Iran from establishing a military presence in Syria. We will not relent in pursuit of this goal just as we did not relent in bringing about the cancellation of the bad nuclear agreement with Iran, a goal which was seen as impossible when I put it on the international agenda for the first time several years ago.
"In the diplomatic sphere, we will continue to apply pressure on the dangerous, extremist regime in Iran. Just yesterday [Tuesday], we saw the fruit of this pressure in remarks by the Iranian president who said that many among the Iranian people have lost hope in the future and strength of Iran due to the resumption of economic sanctions," Netanyahu said.
