Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Iranian people in a rare interview Thursday with BBC Persian. He emphasized that Iranian nuclear weapons acquisition would make it functionally impossible to challenge the regime either from within or from outside, and that the result would be tragedy:

Israel’s prime minister says Iranians “deserve better” than their current government and that their lives could get worse if it gains nuclear weapons. In an interview with BBC Persian, Benjamin Netanyahu warned: “If they get nuclear weapons this brutal regime will be immortal, like North Korea.” He also said the new President, Hassan Rouhani, could not “change the real decisions” made by the Supreme Leader.

Rouhani, a revolutionary-era cleric and consummate regime insider, was for decades a key player in Iran’s security establishment. Observers worry that Rouhani – who on several occasions called for mass crackdowns of anti-regime figures – is either unable or unwilling to significantly reform Iran’s closed society.

More than 170 individuals have reportedly been executed since Rouhani’s election. His appointed justice minister is reviled by reformers as a mass murderer. Political prisoners continue to languish in Iranian prisons.

As far as Rouhani’s diplomatic overtures toward the West go – overtures which many fear are designed to stall for time while Iran completes its nuclear drive – Netanayhu declared in Persian “we are not sadeh-lowe [‘suckers’].”

[Photo: BBCWorldNewsWatch / YouTube]