By Steve Hynd
Israel's foreign minister has finally admitted that Israel won't unilaterally attack Iran if Iran ever builds the bomb.
Speaking at the end of a three-day visit to Russia, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Tehran's nuclear program is the world's problem, not just Israel's, and that its Arab neighbors should be even more concerned about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran than Israel is. He said other nations should not expect Israel to solve this problem for them.
"We do not intend to bomb Iran, and nobody will solve their problems with our hands," Lieberman told reporters. "We don't need that. Israel is a strong country, we can protect ourselves.
"But the world should understand that the Iran's entrance into the nuclear club would prompt a whole arms race, a crazy race of unconventional weaponry across the Mideast � that is a threat to the entire world order, a challenge to the whole international community," he said, in Russian. "So we do not want a global problem to be solved with our hands."
I think he just said that while Israel won't attack, someone else should.
But I have to say I've always found the "crazy race of unconventional weaponry" argument utterly unconvincing. After all, Israel has had nukes for decades and its neighbours have spent most of that time feeling more threatened by Tel Aviv than Teheran. So where's the crazy race? We're expected to believe, just 'coz, that Iran's entirely hypothetical nukes are way more scary and destabilizing than Israel's very real ones. I don't see how that works.
Come Steve, be charitable. When someone like Lieberman makes a reasonably rational statement it is a little unfair to suggest he is passing off the putative war to someone else. He'd probably settle for completely debilitating economic sanctions.
ReplyDeleteKidding aside his statement indicates to me that the Obama administration is having a salutary effect at least as far as toning down the rhetoric goes.