Netanyahu: Neutralizing Iran would reduce danger of Hamas, Hezbollah

Likud Party Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday said on Thursday that neutralizing Iran's leaders would reduce the danger posed to Israel and others by Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah militants in south Lebanon.

"We have had two wars with two Iranian proxies in two years and Persia has now two bases on the eastern Mediterranean," said Netanyahu, referring to this month's brutal fighting in Gaza against Hamas and Israel's 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"I think we are going to have to deal with neutralizing the power of the mother regime," Netanyahu told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "The Hamas stronghold would be about as important, if Iranian power was neutralized, as Cuba was when the Soviet Union became irrelevant."

When asked about achieving peace in Gaza, Netanyahu swiftly turned his answer to Iran, which he said is in a "100-yard dash to get nuclear weapons."

"We have never had, since the dawn of the nuclear age, nuclear weapons in the hands of such a fanatical regime," said Netanyahu.

As prime minister, he said, he would move rapidly to advance a workable peace with moderates in the Palestinian Authority and work to drive down the radicals.

"But all of this will fall by the wayside if the world fails to stop Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons. It was and remains the greatest challenge facing the leaders of the 21st century at the beginning of the 21st century," he said.

Netanyahu said he saw no chance of peace with Hamas. "You know, what agenda can you have against an organization who seeks to obliterate you off the face of this earth," he said.

He also told delegates to the forum that preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons ranks above the economy in the challenges facing the leaders of the 21st century.

Netanyahu said the global financial meltdown was reversible but the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a radical regime was not.

The hawkish Likud Party leader spoke forcefully Thursday at the World Economic Forum on the need to lower taxes and increase competitiveness in the Israeli economy if he emerges as prime minister after the Feb. 10 elections.