Israel's envoy blasts German media's opposition to attacking Iran
Story Code : 144754
“I always read in the newspapers here what will happen if there is a war with Iran” said Yaakov Hadas-Handelsman in an interview with the German newspaper Bild on Saturday.
“The German press says that Israel should not attack Iran. That sounds as if Iran is only a problem for Israel,” he insisted.
The Israeli envoy also called on Berlin to use its influence in Europe to assume a leading role in uniting the European Union in efforts to pressure Iran into abandoning its nuclear energy program.
This is while German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere said in February that an Israeli strike on Iran would be “highly unlikely” to succeed, and would culminate in “obvious political damage.”
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle also said that his country “reject[s] a discussion about military options” with respect to Iran’s nuclear energy program.
The Israeli envoy to Germany repeated the recent threatening rhetoric by the Tel Aviv regime that it would keep all options on the table if diplomacy fails to force Iran to halt its nuclear energy program.
“We are not ruling anything out. Iran should not know what we are planning,” he claimed.
The development comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed, during his latest visit to Washington on March 5, to get US President Barack Obama to submit to a military strike against Iran.
Following his meeting with Netanyahu, Obama said that Washington would continue to explore diplomatic options to address the issue of Iran’s nuclear energy program.
The US president referred to ‘military action’ as yet an ‘alternative,’ but claimed he would explore it ‘when all else fails.’
Meanwhile, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei stated last month that the Iranian nation has never sought and will never seek nuclear weapons and has the capacity to break the supremacy of powers that rely on nuclear arms.
Nevertheless, the United States, Israel, and some of their allies continue to accuse Tehran of seeking military objectives in its nuclear energy program. Washington and Tel Aviv have repeatedly threatened Tehran with the "option" of a military strike.
Iran argues that as a signatory to the NPT and a member of the IAEA, it has every right to develop and acquire nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes.