Israel Says It Foiled Iran's '3-Point Plan', Gives Tehran A History Lesson

NDTV

a day ago

New Delhi:
Iran has no option but to give up their quest to acquire a nuclear weapon and come to the table with clean hands to pursue a peaceful and responsible future, said Israel's Ambassador Reuven Azar, cautioning Tehran that failing to do so will lead to a catastrophic outcome for the Islamic country.
Urging Iran to learn from the history books, Mr Azar said, "Saddam Hussein tried to acquire nuclear weapons. The Assad regime tried to acquire nuclear weapons. Gaddafi also attempted to do the same," but the outcome remained the same.
'RADICAL REGIME ACTING IN CLANDESTINE WAY'
Adding that the situation is worse in Iran's case, he said, "This time it (the attempt to acquire nukes) is coming from a radical regime that has time-and-again declared that they want to annihilate the State of Israel... that they want to remove the so-called 'tumours cancer' that they want to get rid of the 'small Satan' Israel in order to fight the 'big Satan', United States. So, when you have a combination of radicalism that creates a quest for destroy another member of the United Nations, and on top of that, you create or you build weapons of mass destruction, that is something that has to be confronted."
Explaining that timing and reason behind Israel's Operation Rising Lion, in which it has struck over 200 locations in Iran, including military and nuclear installations, Mr Azar said that Iran was "fooling the world" and acting in a clandestine way to enrich uranium to a level where is was on the verge of having the capability to make a nuclear weapon. Tel Aviv, could not wait any longer, he added.
"Israel has declared time and again that if the Iranians attempt to create a nuclear weapon. Israel will have no choice but to take action, and this is exactly what we did," the Israeli Ambassador told NDTV in an exclusive interview.
'IRAN'S 3-FOLD PLAN FOILED'
He went on to say that Iran had a three-fold plan to pose an "existential threat" to Israel, and something needed to be done urgently. "We attacked some of their ballistic missile capability because Iran was actually trying to destroy Israel on 3 tracks. The first is their multi-decade attempt to acquire nuclear weapons, which we have managed to foil. The second is the huge production of ballistic missiles. They have thousands of them. They were planning to build 10,000 ballistic missiles in the next 3 years and 20,000 in the next 6 years," he claimed.
"I want people to understand what we're talking about here. Even without the nuclear weapon, we're talking about each missile carrying a 1,000 kilograms of TNT, which can kill hundreds of people at once, if you fire them. If a barrage of these target a State as small as Israel, which is half of the size of Haryana or roughly the size of Mizoram, that could be devastating to its existence," Mr Azar added.
"The third part that the Iranians had planned, was of course this 'ring of fire' that they were creating around Israel by arming and helping proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the militias in Syria, in Iraq, and in Yemen. So, we took action. The reason we did so now is because we saw that they are close to acquiring a nuclear bomb, and there is almost no time left for a situation to arise, in which Iran may fire a nuclear weapon at us."
'DIPLOMACY CANNOT BE EXPLOITED'
The Israeli Ambassador said that there is still a chance for Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions and pursue the path diplomacy.
"Diplomacy always has a has a chance, but diplomacy cannot be exploited in order to pursue the illicit nuclear military programme that Iran has been doing. What the Iranians have been doing was even confirmed by the IAEA - that Iran is in breach of the safeguards agreement. They have been cheating the whole world for decades."
Mr Azar denied that Israel is alone in this battle. Our allies are with us at all times, he said, adding that Israel is constantly in touch with the United States.