Netanyahu on Meet the Press: "Deep Desire" for Freedom in Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on this morning's Meet the Press (video starts shortly):

On the Iranian pro-democracy protests:

MR. GREGORY: This is an unfolding story that we’ve been seeing all week long. The images from the streets are disturbing, you have a violent crackdown under way in Iran. What does your intelligence in Israel tell you about the weakness, the nature of the Iranian regime today?

MR. NETANYAHU: Well, it’s not my intelligence, but my common sense and the traditional sense. Obviously, you see a regime that represses its own people and spreads terror far and wide. It is a, a regime whose real nature has been unmasked, and it’s been unmasked by incredible acts of courage by Iran’s citizens. They, they go into the streets, they face bullets. And I tell you, as somebody who believes deeply in democracy, that you see the Iranian lack of democracy at work. And I think this better explains and best explains to the entire world what this regime is truly about.

MR. GREGORY: I ask about your intelligence services as well in terms of what hard information you have about what’s going on inside the regime.

MR. NETANYAHU: I don’t know if anyone really knows, and I cannot tell you how this thing will end up. I think something very deep, very fundamental is going on, and there’s an expression of a deep desire amid the people of Iran for freedom, certainly for greater freedom. But perhaps the word is a simple one, freedom. This is what is going on. You don’t need all the intelligence apparatus that modern states have to see something when it faces you right away. It, it’s facing you in–it’s staring us in the face, there’s no question about that.

MR. GREGORY: You know there’s been quite a debate here in the United States and really around the world about what President Obama should do and should say at a moment like this. He has said over the weekend that these are unjust actions, that the whole world is watching, that Iran should not violently crack down on its people. Has he said and done enough, do you think?

MR. NETANYAHU: I’m not going to second-guess the president of the United States. I know President Obama wants the people of Iran to be free. He said as much in his seminal speech in Cairo before the Muslim world. I’ve spoken to him a number of times on this subject, there’s no question we’d all like to see a different, a different Iran with different policies. Remember, this is a regime that not only represses its own people–Sakharov said, Andrei Sakharov, the great Russian scientist and humanist, said that a regime that oppresses its own people sooner or later will oppress its neighbors. And certainly Iran has been doing that. It’s been calling for the, the denial of the Holocaust. It’s threatening to wipe Israel off the map. It’s pursuing nuclear weapons. To that effect it’s sponsoring terror against us, but throughout the world. So I think what everybody would like to see is a change in policy, and the change of policy is both outside and inside.

On the Iranian nuclear threat:

MR. NETANYAHU: We’ve had thousands, hundreds of thousands demonstrate in Israel right and left, but that’s how we behave, that’s how you behave, and I have no doubt that everyone in the world is sympathetic to the desire of the Iranian people for freedom.

MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you about the nature of the Iranian threat. Mohamed ElBaradei, who, as you know, runs the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in an interview with the BBC on Wednesday the following: “The ultimate aim of Iran,” he said, “as I understand it, is they want to be recognized as a major power in the Middle East. [Increasing their nuclear capability] is to them the road to get that recognition, to get that power and prestige. It is also an insurance policy against what they have heard in the past about regime change.” My question, Prime Minister, what does all that’s happening on the streets of Iran do, in your estimation, to the nature of the threat from Iran? Is this a game changer in some way?

MR. NETANYAHU: First of all, I, I don’t subscribe to the view that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is a status symbol. It’s not. These are people who are sending thousands and thousands of missiles to their terrorist proxies Hezbollah and Hamas with the specific instruction to bomb civilians in Israel. They’re supporting terrorists in the world. This is not a status symbol. To have such a regime acquire nuclear weapons is to risk the fact that they might give it to terrorists or give terrorists a nuclear umbrella. That is a departure in the security of the Middle East and the world, certainly in the security of my country, and so I wouldn’t treat the subject so lightly. Would a regime change be a game changer? A policy change would be a game changer.

Hat Tip: Atlas Shrugs, Israel Matsav.