Saturday 11 July 2009

Arad admits Israel failed over Iran

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PressTV
Sat, 11 July 2009 08:55:26 GMT

The Israeli prime minister's National Security Advisor has admitted that the regime has had no success in hindering Iran's peaceful nuclear progress.

Israel displayed an "abominable" failure to address Tehran's nuclear development between 2003 and 2007, Benjamin Netanyahu's aide Uzi Arad said, according to a Friday interview published in Haaretz.

The head of Israel's National Security Council also suggested threatening the Islamic Republic with a naval blockade in a change to the "scorched earth" policy that Netanyahu inherited from the previous administration.

"The more credible and concrete the option, the less likely that it will be needed," he said.

Arad also said "living with" a nuclear Iran, as the West has done with the Soviet Union and China, was not an option for Israel.

The Israeli official claimed that the Middle East would turn into a multi-nuclear region if the West fails to shut down Iran's centrifuges, describing such a scenario as a “nightmare.”

He made the remarks as Israel is known to be the region's sole nuclear-armed state with over 200 ready to launch atomic warheads.

Despite its sizeable arsenal of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, Tel Aviv is bent on portraying Iran as the real threat to the region, an accusation that Tehran throws back at Israel.

Iran argues that, unlike Israel, it is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has willingly opened its atomic activities to the most stringent supervision of UN nuclear watchdog inspectors, according to the terms of the NPT.

Tehran also denies having any intentions of acquiring nuclear weapons, while staying adamant that it will continue to defend its 'inalienable right' to pursue uranium enrichment for civilian applications, allowed to under the NPT, no matter how hard that may be for Israel and its Western allies to accept.



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