Netanyahu on Iran's denial: When ship reaches Eilat, we'll see who the liar is
'We'll expose Iran's true face to the world, fight them, and win,' Netanyahu says at Museum of Tolerance in LA before going on a plane back to Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Thursday rejected Iran's attempt to distance itself from the Klos C ship, that was carrying Iranian-made advanced rockets bound for Gaza.
"The Iranian government says it's all lies. In a few days, the ship will arrive to the Eilat Port and we'll see who the liar is. We'll expose Iran's true face to the world. We'll expose them, fight them and win," Netanyahu said.
Earlier Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called Israel's claims about the ship the "same failed lies," and questioning the timing of the operation - that coincides with the AIPAC annual conference in Washington DC.
"An Iranian ship carrying arms for Gaza. Captured just in time for annual AIPAC anti Iran campaign. Amazing Coincidence!" Zarif wrote on Twitter.
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The IDF said Wednesday that it seized an Iranian ship carrying advanced weapons destined for Gaza on Tuesday night and that it was being towed to the Eilat Port. Elite troops from the Navy's Shayetet 13 unit boarded the ship in open waters on the maritime border of Sudan and Eritrea, some 1,500 kilometers south of Israel.
The Klos C Iranian vessel was sailing under a Panamanian flag, making its way to Sudan from Iran carrying a cargo of advanced rockets capable of reaching distances of up to 200 kilometers.
The prime minister spoke Thursday at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, where exhibits document how 6 million Jews and Europe's lively Jewish culture was destroyed in the Holocaust. He drew a parallel between a 1919 letter on display at the museum in which Adolf Hitler laid out his plans for an "uncompromising removal of the Jews altogether."
Similarly, the Iranian regime calls for the annihilation of the state of Israel "openly and unabashedly," only 70 years after the Holocaust, Netanyahu said.
"We see who is lying and we shall expose what Iran is really doing -- building weapons of mass death and dispatching weapons of immediate death right now to the worst terrorist groups in the world," Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu previously called an interim agreement with Iran "a huge mistake." That six-month deal, set to expire in July, requires Iran to freeze some nuclear activities, which it claims are for peaceful energy purposes, in exchange for relief from sanctions.
"We cannot be tolerant to the intolerant. We cannot be tolerant to the fanatics," he said. "These people are out to destroy a section of people called the Jewish people. We will not let them, we shall expose them and we will fight them. And I'll tell you another thing: We shall beat them."
The Los Angeles museum is part of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Jewish human rights organization whose founder, Rabbi Marvin Hier, the prime minister calls a close friend.
Netanyahu visited it on a previous trip to California and has praised the center's plans to build a Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem.
Ynetnews contributed to this report.
