Dagan walks back that 2015 thing
Outgoing Mossad director Meir Dagan made a lot of waves last week when he said that he did not expect Iran to have nuclear weapons before 2015. Now, in a statement to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Dagan is walking back that assessment. "The Iranian nuclear challenge will stay significant," Dagan said. He explained that the timing "will not change the fact that Iran is working towards nuclear military capabilities and in certain scenarios can shorten the time" it takes to have nuclear weapons....That puts him in line with Prime Minister Netanyahu and with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"It is important for us to learn the lesson of North Korea, which wasn't taken care of properly and didn't get attention from the international community," Dagan said.
The outgoing Mossad head also discussed other "challenges" that Israel may face in the future, including the possibility of a Palestinian state and the war against terror.
Labels: Barack Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear program, Meir Dagan
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:40 AM
2 Comments:
According to Haaretz's Aluf Benn, one of the reasons Netanyahu encouraged Barak to stay on as Defense Minister is to plan Israel's military strategy against Iran. Netanyahu needs Barak's expertise and credentials to pull off a successful operation.
Don't rule one out in the future.
Barak's expertise didn't connect the dots in the Mavi Marmara operation...? and the end game of Operation Cast Lead, a deterrent-maintained stand-off after "mowing the grass"--was that the best possible outcome? His military ops transition to messy diplomatic second acts.
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