Israeli Minister Lapid Hears 'New Music' in Iran
In a recent CNN interview, Israeli Minister Yair Lapid seems to distance himself somewhat from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Iran.
Several hours after the Cabinet meeting on Sept. 15, at which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out the four conditions which the international community must set before it lifts the sanctions and eases the international pressure on Iran, his finance minister, Yair Lapid, gave a rare interview on diplomatic issues to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
In contrast to Netanyahu’s hard-line approach, which regards the overtures of peace from Tehran as an illusion at best or a clever Iranian deception tactic at worst, Lapid’s tone was different: “I’m happy to listen to any new music coming from Iran, but this has to be backed by not only words, but also by deeds.”
In response to Amanpour’s follow-up questions, Lapid adopted a harder tone, saying that “When the reactor in Qom is closed, when they stop enriching uranium … then we can discuss whether we can all hold hands and sing hallelujah together.
“We have to wait and see what happens with [Iranian President Hassan] Rouhani. Since he won the elections, they have installed 7,000 new centrifuges. Of course I’d rather have people tweeting me 'happy Rosh Hashanah' or 'happy New Year' instead of tweeting that they are Holocaust deniers, as it was before. Is this the real thing? Too soon to tell.”
