Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz has warned that even if a nuclear deal is signed, Iran must be stopped from being a nuclear threshold state.

Gantz said on Sunday that “All steps must be taken to ensure that Iran never becomes a nuclear-threshold state. The world must never come to terms with it and Israel will never come to terms with it.”

He also issued a warning to Tehran’s top proxy, the Lebanese Hezbollah, saying Israel will retaliate against any provocative moves.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Israel will maintain its citizens’ security, while “organizing and preparing for the day after, in all ways, so that we can maintain the security of the citizens of Israel on our own”, adding that the Islamic Republic “will use financial gain from the deal to fund regional terror”.

He described the new deal as “shorter and weaker” than the previous agreement, which would allow Tehran to build “stadiums of advanced centrifuges without restrictions” once the deal lapses in two and a half years if it is signed without an extension of the original JCPOA expiration date.

“Two things have happened since the original signing — the Iranians have made great strides in building their enrichment capabilities, and time has passed”, he said, adding, “This terrorism endangers us, endangers other countries in the region, and as we have seen recently, will also endanger American forces in the region”.