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Lapid: US is Israel's most 'strategic asset'

In interview to CNBC Lapid attempts to calm tensions between US, Israel over Iranian deal: 'I think it's OK to have disputes within the family as long we keep it within the family,' Laid said calling Israel most 'strategic asset'

Finance Minister Yair Lapid spoke to CNBC and said that Israel's relationship with the US is its most "strategic asset," in a bid to calm at times bellicose rhetoric being sounded in Israel and the US in wake of the Geneva nuclear agreement between world powers and Iran.

 

"Maybe the most strategic asset we have is the kind of intimacy that we have with the United States government that we've had over the years," Lapid reportedly said. "I think it's OK to have disputes within the family as long we keep it within the family –I think we're still in the frame of (being) within the family."

 

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In an attempt to show understanding towards the deal, Lapid said "We understand the US means well and is doing its best under very complicated circumstances (however) we think we have earned the right to be listened to."

 

(Video: CNBC)

 

After the deal was reached Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu famously called the agreement an "historic mistake," a quote that was the first in a long string of public statements by Israeli officials against the deal.

 

Lapid stressed that the Israeli position did not stem from a fundamental disagreement with the US, but rather its contigent stake in the matter. Israel, Lapid claimed, has "earned the right to be more concerned than anyone else. People have to remember that when they wonder why we have been so loud against this agreement with Iran. For us it's not academic or theoretical, it's existential.

 

"Here's a regime that's been loud about its wish and commitment to the destruction of Israel," Lapid said of the Iranian regime.

 

Only Sunday the issue of Israel-US relations raised its heads when former Prime Minister Ehud slammed Netanyahu, who according to him has declared war on the American administration.

 

"We have declared war on the US... Will the savior in the Iranian matter be Putin, or Obama?" the former prime minister rhetorically asked, adding "We need to go against the American president? To ask questions, to argue, in closed door decisions, of course," hinting criticism at Netanyahu's public statements in regards to the Iranian deal.

 

 

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פרסום ראשון: 12.02.13, 17:04
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