Retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Friday that he got "a sense of determination" that Israel would stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon from a brief discussion with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he spoke to the United Nations.
"It's clear that the deal does postpone Iran's development of nuclear weapons unless they cheat, which is very possible," Dershowitz said in an interview. "Netanyahu said we will be watching very, very carefully.
"If they detect something, I'm sure they'll first confer with the United States, but they will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons," he added. "Israel will not allow [them] to develop nuclear weapons, because Iran has explicitly threatened to use those weapons to annihilate Israel.
"What country in the world will do that, considering what we did during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Israel obviously is going to act in order to defend its citizens."
In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, Netanyahu paused for 45 seconds to protest what he said was the "utter silence" from most of the world on Tehran's threats to destroy his nation.
"Seventy years after the murder of 6 million Jews, Iran's rulers promise to destroy my country, murder my people; and the response from this body — the response from nearly every one of the governments represented here — has been absolutely nothing," he said.
"Utter silence. Deafening silence."
Dershowitz told Newsmax that he and Netanyahu had "a short conversation" after the speech.
"I've known Benjamin Netanyahu for 43 years and we confer from time to time," said the professor emeritus, whose latest book is
"The Case Against the Iran Deal: How Can We Now Stop Iran from Getting Nukes?"
Dershowitz called the prime minister's speech "very excellent" and said that the Tehran deal created "a foregone conclusion that Iran will develop nuclear weapons and that's if Israel and, or, the United States stops them from doing it.
"It's not clear what the American policy is. It's not clear what the American policy is to permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons in 10, 12, 15 years or to stop it.
"Iran does not think that the United States will take military action to stop it," he added.
"They do believe that Israel will take military action — and that will be very difficult.
"The real question now is not whether the deal is a foregone conclusion but whether Iran developing nuclear weapons is a foregone conclusion. Israel is simply not going to allow that to happen.
"The deal makes war more likely," Dershowitz told Newsmax. "It makes it more likely that Iran will seek to have their own nuclear weapons and that Israel and the United States will have to make a very difficult decision whether to permit that to happen or to stop it by military action.
"We all have a common goal to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons," he added.
"Now let's do it."
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