Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman said Thursday that confrontation between Israel and Iran is inevitable, due to Iran’s developing nuclear program and its refusal to abide by the 2015 nuclear agreement.

“A confrontation with Iran is only a matter of time, and not a lot of time,” Liberman said during an interview on Thursday regarding the ongoing effort to bring Teheran back to the 2015 nuclear deal with the world’s powers.

“No diplomatic move or agreement will stop the Iranian nuclear program. This is a problem of the international community but first of all ours because they have stated that their policy is the destruction of Israel, and they do mean it,” he said.

The finance minister also spoke of the Israeli government’s approval of a $1.5 billion budget, be used to prepare the military for a strike against Iran.

“They were surprised why such a large budget was approved for the IDF. The money goes to empowerment and the purchase of advanced systems,” Liberman stated.

Last month, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declared in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly that “Iran’s nuclear program has hit a watershed moment, and so has our tolerance. Words do not stop centrifuges from spinning… We will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.”