Bush won’t allow Iran to go nuclear

Allister Heath

09 August 2006

The former Israeli prime minister tells Allister Heath why he believes the US President will keep his promise to curb Tehran — even if many Europeans remain blind to the threat

If the US is indeed preparing for a serious showdown, those who argue that President Bush invaded the wrong country in 2003 will undoubtedly feel vindicated. Remarkably, Netanyahu agrees: ‘Would it have been smarter to go directly into Iran? Would it have been wiser? In retrospect the answer is probably yes.’ But he also argued that one of the most far-reaching yet least recognised military interventions of the past few decades was Israel’s daring raid on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear power station in 1981, which destroyed its nuclear programme. ‘Saddam with atomic weapons would have been a great danger, too. Israel deserves credit for giving the world two to three decades of nuclear peace from nuclear-armed banditry. Israel was condemned at the time, as it is condemned now, for defending itself, but in so doing also removing a tremendous threat from the world,’ said Netanyahu.

But the conversation again turned to Iran and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map. ‘While denying the Holocaust, he’s openly preparing the next one,’ Netanyahu said. ‘Ahmadinejad is behaving exactly like an Islamist Hitler. He is using the same tactics of signalling in advance the act of destruction. That the same thing is happening is one thing, but that the West is reacting in the same way is unacceptable. What is history for?’

By now, Netanyahu was shouting angrily, shaking his fist as he explained the similarities he sees between the 1930s and today. ‘Yes, there are differences, it is not a perfect analogy. Yes, Germany didn’t have a billion Germans to infect. Yes, Germany had race and not creed as its prime goal. Nazism started its attacks on the Jews and spread to the rest of the world in their mad militancy, and that is exactly what is happening now.’