Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Israel “will continue to be ready to defend ourselves, by ourselves.” Photo: Reuven Kapuscinski.

JNS.org – Hours before a nuclear between Iran and world powers was expected to be finalized Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that “at the bottom line, we are headed toward a bad deal, after which we will continue to be ready to defend ourselves, by ourselves.”

“Even if there are last-minute improvements, it will still be a bad deal that will allow Iran to become a nuclear threshold state, with everything that entails,” Ya’alon said, according to Israel Hayom.

“The agreement in effect launders everything that Iran has done … Neighboring countries are now talking about their own need to arm themselves, which could spark a nuclear arms race in the region,” he continued. “Countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey are talking about it. Not to mention the fact that the agreement doesn’t require [Iran] to decommission even a single nuclear facility or destroy even a single centrifuge.”

Ya’alon outlined the issues that he said “should not only alarm us (Israelis), but anyone who seeks stability in the Middle East and in the world: the fact that the Iranian missile project was not discussed or that the Iranian terrorist activity — activity directed against us like their support for Hezbollah — was not discussed; the funding of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza; the dissemination of rocket manufacturing instructions, or the attempt to launch attacks on us from the Golan Heights, as we saw at the beginning of the year.”