Iran continues to pose a nuclear threat to Israel and world powers should not make any concessions to Tehran at the upcoming talks in Baghdad, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
“Iran wants to destroy Israel and it is developing nuclear weapons to fulfill that goal," Netanyahu said at a conference for civil servants on Monday.
“Against this malicious intention, leading world powers need to display determination and not weakness,” he said. “They should not make any concessions to Iran.”
Netanyahu’s statement comes ahead of talks on May 23 between Iran and a group of international mediators on Iranian nuclear program - the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.
"They [the Iran Six] need to make clear and unequivocal demands that Iran stop all of its nuclear enrichment activity, remove from Iran all the material that has been enriched until now and dismantle the underground nuclear facility near the city Qom," Netanyahu said.
Western nations suspect Iran of pursuing a secret nuclear weapons program but Tehran insists it needs nuclear power solely for civilian purposes.
The leaders of the G8 meeting at Camp David on Friday-Saturday agreed that Iran needed to take concrete steps to prove the claim that its nuclear program was peaceful.
Iran is currently subject to a series of EU and U.S. sanctions, including measures targeting the country's lucrative oil industry.
The U.S. Senate unanimously approved on Monday new economic sanctions on Tehran.
The new package toughens sanctions against Iran's oil and banking industries, as well as against any entity that provides Iran with equipment or technology that facilitates censorship or the suppression of human rights, including weapons, rubber bullets, tear gas, and other riot control equipment.
