The Jewish Week, October 7th, 2005

'One Holocaust was enough,' visiting lawmakers tell administration.
Stewart Ain - Staff Writer

Tensions between Israel and Iran increased this week in the wake of an Israeli parliamentary delegation visit to Washington to press the Bush administration and Congress to derail Iran's nuclear ambitions. One Israeli lawmaker even warned that if the United States and Europe don't act, Israel will.

Tommy Lapid, who made the trip last week as a member of the Knesset's Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Jewish Week Tuesday that he and the others were attempting to "warn the Europeans and the Americans not to try to evade the question and put a blind eye to the problem."

"If it is postponed until it is too late, when the situation reaches the point of no return, Israel will have to act," Lapid said.

The chairman of the committee, Yuval Steinitz, said its members stressed in their talks that it must be "up to the U.S. and the Western world to decide" how Iran will be prevented from developing a nuclear bomb." Steinitz stressed that he "never speculated about what Israel should do in Iran."

But he said that one cannot "take too seriously" the signals coming out of Iran.

"Iran just two weeks ago put two huge missiles in a military parade in Tehran," Steinitz said. "One was decorated [with words calling] for the destruction of the United States, the other Israel."

Lapid said that although there was "no coordinated view of the Knesset members [on the trip], each was supportive of the idea that Iran is a danger to Israel. � We told members of Congress that we had one Holocaust and that was enough.

"We are saying that if this [diplomacy] leads to nowhere, someone will have to take over."

Lapid also shrugged off Iran's response to the Israelis' U.S. visit, in which they threatened that an attack would drive up the price of oil to $400 a barrel.

"They are threatening with the oil blackmail all the time," he said.

Meanwhile, a senior State Department official was quoted as telling reporters in Abu Dhabi Saturday that the Bush administration favors giving "diplomacy" a chance to work.

"Countering the danger from weapons of mass destruction, which pose a deadly threat to the entire international community, is an immense challenge which demands diplomacy of action," said Undersecretary of State Robert Joseph.

Ephraim Sneh, a member of the Labor Party and chairman of the Knesset Subcommittee on Defense, told members of the Israel Policy Forum here on Sept. 28 that it appeared "the U.S. is outsourcing to the Europeans" the handling of this issue.

"I'm not advocating an Israeli military option," he said. "But if we have to choose between a nuclear Iran and military action ...

"The Jewish state cannot live normally under the shadow of Iranian nuclear blackmail and we can't negotiate with nuclear blackmail in the background," Sneh said. "The U.S. can lead a serious international effort to isolate Iran so that it can be really a pariah state and to explain to the Iranian people why it is on the terror list."

In his just released book "Navigating Perilous Waters," Sneh calls Iran the "most salient strategic threat to Israel's existence," and notes that in 1993 he was the first to place Iran on Israel's national agenda.

He said with the help of Russia and North Korea, Iran acquired Shihab-3 missiles capable of reaching Israel, and now has two more advanced missiles in various stages of production and ready to become operational next year.

Sneh said these missiles have the ability to carry nuclear warheads and to "strike at Israel even from deep within its territory, as well as at targets in Europe, Russia, India and Africa."

A confrontation with Iran can be avoided, Sneh said, by "political action and by military deterrence."

He said only the U.S. has the ability to convince Russia to stop providing Iran with technical assistance for its military nuclear program. The end of such assistance "would bring about a significant delay" in Iran's ability to produce a nuclear bomb."

Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said Israel believes "Iran's nuclear capability is a near-term development, not something that will happen in a decade."

That fact was made clear by Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, who told Jewish leaders here two weeks ago that Iran may be only six months away from acquiring the technical know-how to build a nuclear bomb.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said the situation with Iran is of the "utmost gravity."

He said the Iranians have the "equipment in place" to begin production of a nuclear bomb and that once they acquire the technical knowledge, they would be in a "position to tell the West that it is too late, we have it."

"They are looking at the North Korean model and seeing that North Korea � had the bomb and therefore was immune from attack," Hoenlein said.

Zalman Shoval, Israel's former ambassador to the United States, said no one should be fooled by Iran's claim that it wants nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

"They need it like a hole in the head," he said. "They have so much cheap oil, it does not make any sense that they need to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

"I think the West will have to make a major effort with the Russians to make it very clear that it is not going to allow the Iranians to produce a nuclear device."

Shoval, an adviser to Sharon, added that Iran is "not only a main promoter of terrorism, but it is the only regime since the Nazis that is ideologically committed to the destruction of another people - Israel.

"It does not mean we are at the point of doing something against Iran," he said. "I'm sure we have ways of dealing with it, but we are part of an alliance of Western democratic states and this is not a go-it-alone situation as far as we are concerned."

 

10/19/2005