Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon told the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies Monday that the agreement being forged by the US and other powers with Iran will free Iran from its current diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions.

An animated Ya’alon said that on the other hand, if there is no deal, there will be more sanctions, and “we will bring this regime back to the dilemma between having a bomb and surviving.”

The deal currently being shaped will allow Iran to become a nuclear threshold country, he explained. It will “rebuild itself economically, accumulate greater self-confidence regarding what they do in the region – and everything they do is bad. What they do in Lebanon, what they do in Syria is bad, in Yemen it’s bad, what they do in the Golan and Gaza is bad, and in South America and elsewhere.”

“This will pave their way to hegemony of a very bad regime, with all of the repercussions regarding proliferation, and what other regimes will do,” he predicted.