Israel on North Korea's Nuclear Test: It's All About Iran

It took less than a day after Pyongyang’s second nuclear test on 25 May for Israel to identify the real significance: Iran.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman stated that the international community had to do everything to prevent Iran and North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons. He told Army Radio: "To our regret we see a mad arms race.....Everything must be done in order thwart their attempts to reach a nuclear capability." Lieberman added:

Up until today there were neither sanctions against Iran nor against North Korea. They need to be completely closed in terms of financial activities; the two states need to understand they are dependent on the supply of petrol because they have no refineries.

This, however, was far from Israel's most ambitious attempt to put Iran at the centre of a global anti-Israel nuclear conspiracy. For that, we have to go to Latin America.

According to Ha'aretz, a secret Israeli government report states that Venezuela and Bolivia are supplying Iran with uranium for its nuclear program. For those who might have forgotten, Venezuela expelled the Israeli ambassador and Bolivia cut its relations with Israel after the latter’s offensive in Gaza. Thus they join the list of ‘dangerous’ countries whose activities should prompt more hawkish US policies.

The ultimate warning from the North Korean developments had already come from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "If Israel did not take out the Iranian threat, no one would." Of course, for this outcome, he constructed the ‘unique’ situation of Israel in the face of its ‘existential threat.’ The never-ending "existential threat" was outlined to his fellow Likud Party members:

Israel is not like other countries. We are faced with security challenges that no other country faces, and our need to provide a response to these is critical, and we are answering the call....These are not regular times. The danger is hurtling toward us.

Of course, the view from the other side is very different. Responding to Israeli charges that Bolivia and Venezuela were supplying uranium to Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted:

There is no cooperation between us. We are opposed to the nuclear proliferation; we are opposed to storing nukes. We have announced this repeatedly.

So the North Korean test becomes just one more rationale in the ongoing process of "securitization". While Israel tries to erect an internationally-supported justification for hard-line policies against Tehran, putting other countries like Bolivia and Venezuela beyond the acceptable, Iran uses those Israeli declarations to set up its own "reasonable" global system, which just happens to include bigger and better --- if non-nuclear --- missiles.