“Amid
intensifying Israeli news reports saying that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu is close to ordering a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program,
his deputy foreign minister called Sunday for an international declaration that
the diplomatic effort to halt Tehran’s enrichment of uranium is dead.” (The New York Times, 12 August)
Netanyahu is just barking. If he's really serious about taking military action, he should have done this a long time ago. In fact, he has been procrastinating too much since 1992, the year he paints Iran as a nuclear threat.
ReplyDeleteIsrael paints Iran as Enemy No. 1: 1992
My apologies. Here is the correct link along with this excerpt: Imminent Iran nuclear threat? A timeline of warnings since 1979.
ReplyDelete2. Israel paints Iran as Enemy No. 1: 1992
Though Israel had secretly done business with the Islamic Republic after the 1979 revolution, seeking to cultivate a Persian wedge against its local Arab enemies, the early 1990s saw a concerted effort by Tel Aviv to portray Iran as a new and existential threat.
1992: Israeli parliamentarian Benjamin Netanyahu tells his colleagues that Iran is 3 to 5 years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon – and that the threat had to be "uprooted by an international front headed by the US."
1992: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres tells French TV that Iran was set to have nuclear warheads by 1999. "Iran is the greatest threat and greatest problem in the Middle East," Peres warned, "because it seeks the nuclear option while holding a highly dangerous stance of extreme religious militanCY."
1992: Joseph Alpher, a former official of Israel's Mossad spy agency, says "Iran has to be identified as Enemy No. 1." Iran's nascent nuclear program, he told The New York Times, "really gives Israel the jitters."