MOSCOW – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held talks with RussianPresident Vladimir Putin on Monday after accusing Iran of wanting “to turnLebanon into one giant missile site”.
He made his comments before leaving for Moscow, where he again said Iranwanted to “destroy” the Jewish state.
Netanyahu has held a series of discussions with Putin in recent months onIran s influence in war-torn Syria and in Lebanon, seeking to persuadeRussia to limit Iran s presence near Israeli territory and to stop it fromentrenching itself militarily in Syria.
Russia, Iran and Lebanon s Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah — whichis backed by Tehran — all support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in hiscountry s civil war.
Netanyahu said before he left Israel that he planned to discuss with PutinIran s “relentless efforts to establish a military presence in Syria, whichwe strongly oppose and are also taking action against”.
“We will also discuss Iran s effort to turn Lebanon into one giant missilesite, a site for precision missiles against the state of Israel, which wewill not tolerate.”
After viewing an exhibition in Moscow dedicated to the 1943 uprising at theSobibor Nazi death camp, Netanyahu said that Israel is “still ready toprevent any attempts of this type of ideology, in the first place Iran,which speaks of the intention to destroy us”.
“We will stand before them (Iran) with all our might,” Netanyahu said.”There will not be another Holocaust.”
The two leaders also took part in a Holocaust remembrance ceremony atMoscow s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center and watched parts of aRussian-made film on the Sobibor uprising.
Putin said modern political and religious leaders should do “everythingpossible to preserve historical memory in the 21st century and prevent theweeds of nationalist ideology spreading in whatever form it takes:anti-Semitism, Russophobia and other phobias built on hatred”. AFP