- Iran: Eight Prisoners Hanged on Drug Charges
- Daughter of late Iranian president jailed for ‘spreading lies’ - IRAN: Annual report on the death penalty 2016 - Taheri Facing the Death Penalty Again - Dedicated team seeking return of missing agent in Iran - Iran Arrests 2, Seizes Bibles During Catholic Crackdown
- Trump to welcome Netanyahu as Palestinians fear U.S. shift
- Details of Iran nuclear deal still secret as US-Tehran relations unravel - Will Trump's Next Iran Sanctions Target China's Banks? - Don’t ‘tear up’ the Iran deal. Let it fail on its own. - Iran Has Changed, But For The Worse - Iran nuclear deal ‘on life support,’ Priebus says
- Female Activist Criticizes Rouhani’s Failure to Protect Citizens
- Iran’s 1st female bodybuilder tells her story - Iranian lady becomes a Dollar Millionaire on Valentine’s Day - Two women arrested after being filmed riding motorbike in Iran - 43,000 Cases of Child Marriage in Iran - Woman Investigating Clinton Foundation Child Trafficking KILLED!
- Senior Senators, ex-US officials urge firm policy on Iran
- In backing Syria's Assad, Russia looks to outdo Iran - Six out of 10 People in France ‘Don’t Feel Safe Anywhere’ - The liberal narrative is in denial about Iran - Netanyahu urges Putin to block Iranian power corridor - Iran Poses ‘Greatest Long Term Threat’ To Mid-East Security |
Thursday 05 April 2012Dagan: Israel should trust Obama to stop Iran nukes
JPost -- Israel should trust US President Barack Obama when he says that he will not let Iran build a nuclear weapon, former Mossad head Meir Dagan told The Jerusalem Post this week. "If the US president says that he is not going to allow Iran to reach nuclear capability, if we are not going to trust him, then who are we going to trust?" Dagan said. He told the Post that Israel was making a mistake by portraying the issue of Tehran's nuclear ambitions as one of Israel against Iran, and should leave the question to the international community. "We are now in a situation where it [Iran's nuclear program] is the main interest of most of the countries in the region and the US and the international community," he said. "We never, ever had anything against the people of Iran, and I think that a problem that is creating such a great threat to the region and to the stability of the region and the economy of the region should be dealt with as an international issue." Dagan, who stepped down as head of the Mossad just over a year ago and now heads oil, gas and uranium exploration company Gulliver Energy, said that a strike on Iran would not be able to halt the Islamic Republic's drive for nuclear weapons, as such a move could only destroy infrastructure, not nuclear know-how. "Knowledge on the nuclear issue is something that you are not able to prevent, because knowledge is something that remains in the brains of people. You are not capable, really, of eliminating knowledge from people," he said. Click here for full Jpost coverage of the Iranian threat He repeated his view that an attack would lead Israel into a regional war conducted mostly through Tehran's proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and perhaps even Syria. Given that a regional war is the likely outcome of attacking Iran and that it would only be able only to delay the project, not to stop it, the question arises whether an attack is the best solution to the issue, Dagan said. "I believe that such a solution should be a tool available to the political level, but I'm not sure it should be the first option. It should be the last option," he said. He added that he believed the Iranian regime to be a rational regime and said that in his estimate, Tehran would back down from its nuclear weapons ambition if faced with choosing between the program and its own survival. "If they were to face a situation where they would have to judge the survival of the regime versus the [nuclear] project, I believe they would choose the survival of the regime," Dagan said. Dagan rejected claims that his comments would give the Iranians a sense that they could act with impunity. "If someone like me is speaking against it [attacking Iran], then the Iranians have to understand that Israel is probably considering seriously doing so. Then, in a way, it's helping those efforts, making it a reliable scenario," he said. Meir Dagan will discuss the Iranian nuclear threat at the first annual Jerusalem Post Conference in New York on April 29. The full interview will be published on Friday. |