Sunday
Jul052009
Video: "An Iranian Atomic Bomb Can Wipe Israel off the Map in a Matter of Seconds"
Sunday, July 5, 2009 at 5:40
Iran: Did Joe Biden Just “Green Light” an Israeli Air Strike?
On Thursday, speaking to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, claimed that an Iranian atomic bomb can “wipe Israel off the map in a matter of seconds.”
Oren did address the key immediate issue in US-Israeli relations: “The Israeli and American sides are working earnestly, ardently to try to find a compromise over the question of the degree to which construction can continue in settlements to accord what we call the normal life. And I am confident that we will find a solution for this.”
However, Oren just as quickly tried to shift attention to Iran, rather than Palestine, as the question that needed resolution: “I never said settlements are not an issue… but they're not the issue.” While the Netanyahu Government continues to hold out against any local concession, it will look for action against Tehran's "existential threat": "Everyone is waiting to see what will come out of this, but while we're waiting, while we're watching, the [nuclear] clock is ticking.”
To learn more about “the Iranian threat", one can read Oren’s own words from May 2009:
On Thursday, speaking to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, claimed that an Iranian atomic bomb can “wipe Israel off the map in a matter of seconds.”
Oren did address the key immediate issue in US-Israeli relations: “The Israeli and American sides are working earnestly, ardently to try to find a compromise over the question of the degree to which construction can continue in settlements to accord what we call the normal life. And I am confident that we will find a solution for this.”
However, Oren just as quickly tried to shift attention to Iran, rather than Palestine, as the question that needed resolution: “I never said settlements are not an issue… but they're not the issue.” While the Netanyahu Government continues to hold out against any local concession, it will look for action against Tehran's "existential threat": "Everyone is waiting to see what will come out of this, but while we're waiting, while we're watching, the [nuclear] clock is ticking.”
To learn more about “the Iranian threat", one can read Oren’s own words from May 2009:
The principal sponsor of Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran is inextricably linked to the terrorist threat. But when the Islamic Republic achieves nuclear weapons-capability—as early as this year, according to Israeli intelligence estimates—the threat will amplify manifold.
A nuclear-armed Iran creates not one but several existential threats. The most manifest emanates from Iran’s routinely declared desire to “wipe Israel off the map,” and from the fact that cold war calculi of nuclear deterrence through mutually assured destruction may not apply to Islamist radicals eager for martyrdom. Some Israeli experts predict that the Iranian leadership would be willing to sacrifice 50 percent of their countrymen in order to eradicate Israel.
Beyond the perils of an Iranian first-strike attack against Israel, the possibility exists that Iran will transfer its nuclear capabilities to terrorist groups, which will then unleash them on Israel via the country’s porous ports and border crossings.
A nuclear Iran will also deny Israel the ability to respond to terrorist attacks: in response to an Israeli retaliation against Hezbollah, for example, Iran would go on nuclear alert, causing widespread panic in Israel and the collapse of its economy. Finally, and most menacing, many Middle Eastern states have declared their intention to develop nuclear capabilities of their own once Iran acquires the bomb.
Israel will swiftly find itself in a profoundly unstable nuclear neighborhood prone to violent revolutions and miscalculations leading to war. As former Labor Party minister Efraim Sneh says, under such circumstances, all Israelis who can leave the country will.