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US President George W. Bush promised Israel’s opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu that the United States will join the Jewish state in a nuclear strike against Iran, Israel Radio reported today.
Former Prime Minister Netanyahu, opposition Likud party’s hardline chairman who opposes the US-backed Annapolis peace process, reiterated to President Bush his stance, that a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Iran’s nuclear installations was the only way to stop the Islamic nation’s nuclear weapons ambitions.
“I told him my position and Bush agreed,” Netanyahu told Israel Radio.
During their 45-minute meeting at King David hotel in Jerusalem Netanyahu also told Bush that “Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish people and will remain under Israeli sovereignty for eternity.”
President Bush issued a stark warning to Iran over Strait of Hormuz incident, saying that “all options are on the table to protect our assets.”
“There will be serious consequences if they attack our ships, pure and simple,” Bush said during the joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem. “And my advice to them is, don’t do it.”
Bush criticized those who interpret the National Intelligence Estimate, which found that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons program in 2003, as a sign that Iran was no longer a threat.
“Let me remind you what the NIE actually said,” Bush stold reporters. “It said that as far as the intelligence community could tell, at one time the Iranians had a military — covert military program that was suspended in 2003 because of international pressure. My attitude is that a non-transparent country, a country which has yet to disclose what it was up to, can easily restart a program.”
Israel: All Options On Table To Stop Iran
AFP
January 10, 2008
Israel is keeping all options on the table if economic and diplomatic pressure fails to halt archfoe Iran’s nuclear programme, Israel’s ambassador to the United States said on Thursday.
“In assessing the threat from Iran we see in sync and think similarly. Both America and Israel understand the severity of the threat, the implication of the threat if it grows,” Israel’s US Ambassador Sallai Meridor said.
He spoke a day after visiting US President George W. Bush met Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem at the start of his regional visit for talks that focused on the Islamic republic.
“Both the US and Israel would prefer seeing this threat removed through diplomatic-economic means without any need to take other steps,” he said.
Asked if a military strike was a realistic option, Meridor said “both the US and Israel haven’t removed any option from the table,”
“All options are on the table, not only in the future. They are on the table if we get to the point, and I hope we don’t get to the point, that diplomactic and economic preferred alternatives will fail to produce the hoped for results.”
International support for new sanctions on Iran has been waning since a US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in early December said that the Islamic republic had halted a nuclear weapons programme in 2003.
Israel considers the Islamic republic its main regional threat in the wake of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated statements for it to be wiped off the map.
Widely considered to be the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, Israel along with the US suspects that Tehran’s nuclear programme is a cover for developing atomic weapons, a charge Iran denies.
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