On July 9 (local time), according to Xinhua, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu affirmed that his country will not allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons, and announced that it will expand the scale of domestic weapons production to reduce dependence on foreign supply.
Speaking at the graduation ceremony of Israeli air force pilots, Netanyahu emphasized that the government's stance on Iran's nuclear program will not change, regardless of future international negotiations or agreements.
Our policy is very clear: whether or not there is an agreement, Iran will not have nuclear weapons," Netanyahu said.
The Israeli leader said that if the US and Israel had not conducted airstrikes against Iran before, Tehran could have gotten closer to the goal of possessing military nuclear capabilities.
Israel has repeatedly accused Iran for many years of pursuing a nuclear weapons development program. Meanwhile, Iran has always denied this accusation and affirmed that its nuclear program only serves peaceful purposes.
Besides the nuclear issue, Mr. Netanyahu also announced a plan to strengthen national defense capabilities in the long term.
Accordingly, Israel plans to add 350 billion shekels (about 116 billion USD) to the defense budget in the next 10 years.
He said that most of the investment will be for the air force, and emphasized that Israel will strongly develop its domestic arms manufacturing industry.
We will build a large-scale ammunition production industry right in Israel to reduce dependence on foreign procurement," the Israeli Prime Minister said.
According to him, expanding domestic production capacity will help Israel be more proactive in the context of the regional security environment continuing to be complex.
Netanyahu's statement was made amid escalating tensions between the US and Iran.
On the same day, US President Donald Trump declared that negotiations with Iran had "ended", while the two sides continued to launch new attacks on each other.
On the Israeli side, Army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said that the country's defense forces are closely monitoring all developments in Iran as well as Lebanon and are ready to deploy military measures immediately if necessary.
Observers believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu's latest statement shows that Israel continues to maintain a tough stance on Iran, while promoting a strategy to strengthen its self-reliant defense capabilities in the context of still unstable Middle East security.
