Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani spoke with his signature straightforward manner Monday night in expressing his strong support for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s right to speak out on the Iranian nuclear threat — including at a joint session of the U.S. Congress next month.
Giuliani spoke with media during a visit (Feb. 2) to the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem.
“I want the people of Israel to know that there is very strong support that if there is going to be any agreement with Iran, it must be based upon the fact that Iran needs to have virtually no possibility of maintaining any nuclear arsenal,” Giuliani said.
“I therefore deeply admire Prime Minister Netanyahu for speaking out on this issue, but he honestly has no choice,” he continued.
“If someone threatens to kill you, you simply don’t give them the gun to do it, unless there’s something wrong with you.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu described the former New York City mayor as a “true leader,” recalling his pivotal role in leading the people of New York in the wake of Al Qaeda’s “9/11” terror attack on the city’s Twin Towers at the World Trade Center, and on other sites in America in 2001.
Thanking Giuliani for his support, Netanyahu added, “Your visit comes at a particularly critical time because we are growing ever closer to the P5+1 agreement, an agreement which would directly endanger the State and people of Israel by leaving in the hands of Iran the ability to develop nuclear bombs.
“This is an agreement which is dangerous not only for us but indeed for the entire world. My responsibility is to do everything possible in order to prevent such an agreement.”
Mayor Giuliani also spoke about the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who he described as a “personal hero.” He said that he had no doubt that Begin would have worked with the same resolve in regards to an agreement with Iran.
The Mayor concluded by saying that Begin defined true leadership because, “he was able to state his goals very clearly and stick with those goals whether they were popular or not, because he always asked not what the popular decision was, but what was good for his country.”
