Netanyahu, waving ‘Iranian drone wreckage‘, urges West not to appease Tehran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, brandishing what he said was wreckage from an Iranian drone, used an annual security conference in Munich to warn of Tehran’s alleged attempts to dominate the Middle East, and Israel’s resolve to prevent it.

Iranian aggression “is in my judgment the greatest threat to our world,” Netanyahu said Sunday, urging leaders not to repeat the mistakes of Munich negotiators who did not Adolf Hitler in 1938 for fear of provoking a war. Rather than preventing war, the Israeli leader said, their inaction “made a wider war inevitable and far more costly.”

Netanyahu has used other high-profile platforms – including the US Congress and United Nations General Assembly – to highlight the threat if Iran develops nuclear weapons. On Sunday, he focused equally on Iran’s conventional military entrenchment in Syria and the dangers it creates.

Israel feels increasingly abandoned as regional partners prioritise their often conflicting interests in Syria’s seven-year civil war, now that a common enemy – Islamic State – is largely defeated. That has left Israeli leaders with an unpalatable choice: tolerate a permanent Iranian military presence on their border, or risk going to war to prevent it.

Netanyahu said Israel has stayed on the sidelines of the Syrian war to this point, acting only to stop transfers of advanced weapons bound for Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy militia and Shiite political party in Lebanon. But he said that could change if Iran establishes a new reality on the ground in Syria.

If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad allows the Iranian military to entrench itself in his country, “then obviously he is challenging us to a different position than we’ve had,” Netanyahu said. Israel is “absolutely resolute in our determination to stop and roll back the aggression of Iran’s regime.”