Israel and Germany have restarted bilateral consultations after longstanding disagreements about settlement building. Angela Merkel has said she agrees that Israel faces an increased threat from Iran.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that Germany shared Israel’s goal of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear arms, but said they differed on how that should be achieved.
“Nuclear armament must be prevented, Germany will participate very strongly in it,” she said. “What we do not always agree on, is the way to achieve this goal.”
Merkel was speaking alongside Netanyahu at a press conference in Israel, just a week after he accused European leaders of “coddling Iran’s dictators.” The meeting represented a renewal of regular government consultations between the two nations after they were paused in 2017 when Merkel expressed her disapproval of Israeli settlement building in the West Bank.
She said the Iranian threat to Israel had increased, as demonstrated by the presence of Iranian troops near the Golan Heights.
“In this respect, we see the pressure and environment under which you live here, and this is very different from the situation in which we may be living in the European Union. I therefore expressly confirm that Israel must, of course, defend itself if it is attacked.”
Netanyahu paid tribute to the friendship between the two countries and repeated his opposition to the nuclear agreement with Iran, saying it handed billions of dollars into the hands of the government in Tehran, which promotes Islamist terrorism.
The nuclear deal
There had been no shortage of controversy ahead of the visit, with Netanyahu wideley expected to press Merkel and other EU leaders to follow US President Donald Trump’s lead and pull out of the Iran nuclear deal.
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