WarSclerotic

Barak: Israel can’t rely on world to stop Iran from going nuclear | The Times of Israel.

Defense Minister tells paper he and PM see ‘eye to eye’ on Iranian issue

Defense Minister Ehud Barak (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)

Israel can’t rely on the world to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in an interview partially published in the Israeli press on Sunday.

Barak also said that despite some disagreements, he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are on the same page regarding how to deal with Iran.

“I hope the world will resist, and not in any way let Iran achieve nuclear capability. Can we depend on that 100 percent? I say no,” Barak said, in a preview of a full interview to be published by Israel Hayom before Yom Kippur on Tuesday.

Netanyahu has made similar overtures in the past several weeks, engaging in a sharp back and forth with the United States over setting red lines beyond which military action would be taken against Iran’s nuclear program.

After Washington rebuffed Netanyahu’s request to set such lines, Netanyahu shot back that the US had no right to try to hold Israel back from taking military action on its own.

Israeli officials have said in the past that they cannot rely on the world to protect them against Iran, even while lobbying for world action.

Though many Israeli officials have disagreed with Netanyahu’s drive for a military strike behind closed doors, and sometimes in the public sphere, Barak reiterated that he is with Netanyahu on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program.

“The prime minister and I see eye to eye regarding Iran,”Barak said.

Iran is widely suspected of attempting to covertly develop a nuclear weapon, a charge the Islamic Republic denies, although on Thursday a senior Iranian official admitted that Iran had fed false information to International Atomic Energy Agency investigators.

The issue has come front and center in recent months as saber-ratlling grows, with Iranian and Israeli officials regularly trading threats in the media as Iran has come under increasingly harsh economic sanctions from Western powers.

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