JERUSALEM ( FOX NEWS) – President-elect Donald Trump will be a good
friend to Israel and hopefully the two countries can work together to dismantle
the international
nuclear agreement with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said in an interview Sunday.
While the two
countries are close allies, relations were sometimes tense between Netanyahu
and President Barack Obama because of their vastly different world views on the
Iran deal and other issues.
There is sentiment
in the nationalist Israeli right wing that Trump's election could usher in a
new era of relations with the United States.
"I know Donald
Trump," Netanyahu told CBS's "60 Minutes" in an interview that
will air later Sunday night. "And I think his attitude, his support for
Israel is clear. He feels very warmly about the Jewish state, about the Jewish people.
There's no question about that," Netanyahu said.
His remarks were
significant because critics have accused Trump of tolerating anti-Semitism
among some of his supporters.
Netanyahu said he
"had differences of opinion" with President Obama the "most
well-known, of course, is Iran."
The Israeli prime
minister has been one of the fiercest critics of the nuclear deal and butted
heads with Obama over the issue.
Iran has long backed
armed groups committed to Israel's destruction and its leaders have called for
it to be wiped off the map. Israel fears that Iran's nuclear program is
designed to threaten its very existence.
Netanyahu said there
are "various ways of undoing" the 2015 deal, in which Iran agreed to
limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international
sanctions on its oil industry and finances.
"I have about
five things in my mind," Netanyahu said, declining to go into further
detail.
During his campaign,
Trump was harshly critical of the nuclear deal.
FOX NEWS
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