Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at Hudson Institute's Herman Kahn Award Dinner in New York, 2016.

This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined Hudson Senior Fellow Mike Doran for a conversation on the dramatic improvement in Israel’s relationship with the Arab world, the risks of reentering a nuclear deal with Iran, the sources of Israel’s rising power, and the United States' indispensable role in the region.

Read our key takeaways from Prime Minister Netanyahu's remarks below, and join us next week as Walter Russell Mead sits down with UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba, and Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command Gen. Richard D. Clarke as he discusses artificial intelligence and machine learning with Nadia Schadlow and Bryan Clark.

7 Key Takeaways

Highlighted remarks from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his Hudson Institute event. Quotes have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
 

1. The JCPOA nuclear deal ensured the "worst of both worlds" for global security:

I think it was a flawed agreement and I think that far from blocking Iran's path to the bomb, it paved its way, but it paved it with gold. I mean, literally with gold, with an enormous amount of money that was put into Iran's coffers. They promptly used it not to build Iran, not to give it water and management resources, to better the lives of the Iranian people, but to fund an unbelievable campaign of conquest.…

So you see Iran is both an aggressor in terms of developing nuclear weapons and an aggressor by virtue of the money that was given by the rescinding of the various constraints, on the various sanctions on Iran. So we got the worst of both worlds. And Iran with a nuclear umbrella, Iran with nuclear weapons is a very dangerous thing for the United States. It's developing ICBMs which it wants to tip with the nuclear payload (because you don't use ICBMs for anything else) to reach America, any American city…..If they have the capacity to threaten mass death, that puts America in a different place, automatically. There's a global player, that all at once enters the global arena with the ability to destroy your cities.

2. Israel’s increasing normalization with Gulf countries:

We had many years of discrete contacts with many countries in the Middle East, and they accelerated during my second term in office, from 2009 on. We've had many discreet contact with countries. But as I said, it moved to a different level after the speech in Congress [in 2015 against the Iran Deal]. And as we were getting more and more concerned with the prospect of Iran achieving nuclear weapons, preventing Iran from achieving nuclear weapons has obviously been a primary goal of the national policy that I've led. And I think because of our efforts, they were set back many years and yet the jury is still up. This is a challenge that we all face including in the coming years.

3. The shifting perspective among Arab leaders:

I think they've come to realize over the years and especially in the last decade, that Israel, far from being their enemy, was their indispensable ally in securing stability, peace and prosperity in the Middle East. Some of them say so fairly openly, most of them say so quietly. They're concerned.

They're concerned with Islamic radicalism of a Shiite or Sunni variety, they're concerned with developing their economies for the betterment of their peoples. They're concerned with countering aggression, Iran's aggression and terrorism, which is spread all over the area, they're concerned with all of that and they see Israel again as the power in the area that is willing to stand up, and often speak up for something that they all agree with. I would in general say this, when Arabs and Israelis agree on something, I think it's worthwhile paying attention to them. We're in this region, we know it very well.

4. Why the U.S. should remain engaged in the Middle East:

I think it would be a great misfortune for us but also for the United States. For us and our newfound Arab allies. We have peace breaking out now. And I think the United States has a vested interest to expand that peace. We have an alliance of the moderates who seek to move our region into the future, and they have an alliance of those who seek to bring them into a dark past. I think the United States should support Israel and its Arab allies and support the expansion of peace….

[The Middle East] is the nexus of three continents. It's not merely the question of energy, which has obviously shifted, it's a question of maritime routes, the supply lines of Europe, the connection of the three continents and the potential emergence of regimes, especially Iran, that would threaten the United States directly.

5. On the death of an Iranian nuclear scientist last week:

Michael Doran:
According to press reports, well, the Iranians are accusing Israel of playing a role in the elimination of Dr. Fakhrizadeh. Do you have anything to share with us about that?

Benjamin Netanyahu:
Well, they always accuse us, rightly or wrongly, on anything that happens in Iran, and our long standing policy is not to comment on such things. So I'm not going to do that now.

6. How PM Netanyahu has reformed Israel's economy:

What drives the competitive advantage of countries is the competitive advantage of firms in the private sector of those countries. So the question was, can you fashion a national policy to foster competition, to foster the achievement of competitive advantage? …This is something that was utterly different from the prevalent thinking in Israel and I came to that with a clear understanding that we have to do this. And so when I had a chance both as prime minister, and later as finance minister, I put forward dozens and dozens of free market reforms that catapulted Israel forward…

We had a sunk cost, because to keep our military, we had to develop a lot of technology and a lot of intelligence. [We had] a lot of people at a very young age coasting the internet highways for intelligence gathering. But when these people left the army, where would they go? Well, they go to Palo Alto, they go to Houston. They wouldn't go to Israel because there was no Silicon Valley. So we had to create a Silicon Wadi. How? By lowering tax rates from 65% marginal tax--insane, OK. [We had] to break all sorts of regulations and so on. And that created this tremendous eruption of thousands of startup companies in many, many areas. So that's the first phase was liberating the economy so that we could use the investments that we put in defense into free market companies.

7. Israel as a guardian of common values in the Middle East:

If Israel wasn't here, then I think the Middle East would clearly be in danger of collapse. And the fact that we are here, the fact that we are the forward position of our common civilization, the fact that we're willing to stand up and protect ourselves but thereby also protect the neighborhood, our allies, our allies in peace – I think this is a vital interest of the United States. Of course, America determines its own interests, but I think many, many Americans understand this partnership of values and interests. Israel is the guardian of common interest and common values in the Middle East. And without it, the world will change for worse, in unimaginable ways.

Go Deeper: Iran Abroad