World powers must make sure Iran understands that there would be "serious implications" if it does not relinquish its nuclear ambitions, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said over the weekend.
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Speaking with The Sunday Times, Bennett also acknowledged, "We have a cold war with Iran."
The Israeli prime minister, who is en route to the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow, is set to meet with nine world leaders on the sidelines of the summit, which follows the G20 summit in Rome.
The Israeli PM is expected to meet with his British counterpart, UK Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, Indian PM Narendra Modi, Australian Premier Scott Morrison, Italian PM Mario Draghi, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Bahrain Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Canadian Premier Trudeau, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
Iran, Bennett told the British magazine, has been threatening Israel for decades. "We will work against them, using all our energy, all our innovation and technology, and economy to get to a point where we are a number of steps ahead," he said.
He added that he believes that Israel's strong growth, beyond increasing prosperity for Israelis, "has allowed us to massively invest in strengthening our military capabilities, both offensive and defensive capabilities" – something crucial given that "it's no secret, Iran is now at their most advanced point of [its] capability to enrich uranium."
Israel, he stressed, "will do whatever is necessary to neutralize this threat.
"There's a regional power called Iran and there's a regional power called Israel. Iran is a rotten regime, violating human rights and killing homosexuals and women who go around uncovered, while they can't even supply clean water to their citizens, but invest their resources in nuclear development."
He further said he believed that the combination of military threat, diplomatic and economic pressure, by Israel, the US and other world powers, "will make it clear to Iran there will be very serious implications if they continue to enrich uranium. I believe that Iran will slow down and stop."
Turning his attention to the climate summit, the Israeli prime minister told Sunday Time that Israel's climate targets include zero emissions by 2050, starting with the phasing-out of coal within the next three years and gradually introducing a carbon tax.
"For the world to get to zero emissions by 2050, changing our behavior will do less than half the job. The other half will come from technology that has yet to be developed. That's where Israel has to lead," he said.
Bennett also acknowledged that he needs to get "Israeli entrepreneurs to pivot from making another cool web app to pivot to working on something with significance," adding that he sees Israeli technology as a way for the Jewish state to advance its policies in the Middle East.
"We have a huge potential in the region to create partnerships in the energy field," he said. "Israel is a very small state, in territorial space. We're in a region where water is scarce but most of our neighbors don't lack for empty desert space, and in 2021, that space means energy. And energy means water."
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