Peres Raises Furor among Israeli Officials over Iran Attack Stance

Friday 24 February 2012

Peres Raises Furor among Israeli Officials over Iran Attack Stance

Israeli President Shimon Peres has called on Israeli officials to stop their recently intensified war rhetoric against Iran, describing such anti-Iran remarks as unnecessary warmongering.

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Thursday that Peres is also scheduled to tell US President Barack Obama that Israel should not attack Iran in the near future. The two are due to meet in Washington, D.C., on Sunday March 4.

Haaretz said that Peres told the Israeli officials that there is no point in the "unceasing self-intimidation," and that Israel should leave “the Iran issue to the superpowers, first and foremost the United States,”

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak strongly criticized Peres’ comments saying that "with all due respect to various officeholders from the past and present, the rumor that there is [only] one government in Israel has also reached the United States," Barak said sarcastically in private conversations, adding: "In the end, there is an elected [Israeli] government that makes the decisions and that is its responsibility."

During Barak's criticism, he made reference to Peres' conduct in the early 1980s when Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, when Menachem Begin was prime minister.

"It's the same Shimon Peres who in 1981 opposed the bombing of the reactor in Iraq," the defense minister said.

"Peres argued then that Begin was leading us to a holocaust, and there are those who claim that, to this day, Peres thinks the attack on the reactor was a mistake. Imagine what would have happened if the Americans and their allies had attempted to get [Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait if he had three atomic bombs. The Americans said in retrospect that Begin was farsighted," Barak reportedly said, according to Haaretz.