Iran is a real problem for the world and a real problem for Israel. The close relations between the two states ended with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolution in 1979, and since then Israel has been depicted by the ayatollah regime as an illegitimate entity that must disappear from the earth. The regime demands nothing from Israel, doesn’t offer compromises, talks, or the like. Israel’s fate is clear, and what is said by one member of the United Nations against another, is indeed hair-raising. So are also Iran’s activities through its various arms — Hezbollah, the Islamic Jihad and other terror groups that harm Israelis and non-Israeli Jews around the world. Thus Iran, in its desire to create nuclear bombs despite its denials, is a threat to Israel even if its threats are always tied to the statement that it would use force against Israel if Israel attacks it or its representatives. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as much as it doesn’t concern the leaders of the Iranian regime from morning to night, is an excuse to foster hate toward Israel. 

This was the reason that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in the 1992 election campaign, had a slogan that promised an agreement with the Palestinians “within six to nine months.” I can still hear his voice repeating this. He didn’t hide his view and explained that he wanted to reach such an agreement before Iran succeeds in creating an atom bomb. 

Netanyahu didn’t invent the Iranian threat, but he tried — with great success — to turn the issue into a national phobia. He spoke hysterically when he said to 60 ambassadors who gathered to hear his view as the head of the opposition in 2006: “It’s 1938, and Iran is Germany.” I told him then that if this sentence were true, the best thing to do is to flee from here. He rejected my response. 

Ten years earlier, when he was first elected prime minister, Netanyahu concluded the opposite of what Rabin did from the Iranian issue. He stopped, in effect, the Oslo process, didn’t seriously try to hold negotiations for a permanent solution with the PLO and became the global watchdog about Iran’s intentions.