Who is the Real Threat: Iran or Israel?

• Who is the real threat: Iran or Israel? 
  by Akbar Ganji, http://www.aljazeera.com/ 
  Israel continues to threaten Iran, despite the new dawn in Iranian diplomacy spearheaded by President Rouhani.
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  During his eight-year presidency Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeatedly used inhumane and absurd language to speak about the existence of Israel and cast doubt on the catastrophic events of the Holocaust, and by doing so he served extremists such as Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu well, to the extent that he was favoured by many Israeli officials in the presidential elections of 2009.
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  Netanyahu, who is the biggest loser in the outcome of Iran’s last presidential elections, called President Hassan Rouhani a “wolf in sheep’s clothing“, alleging that he smiles while building a nuclear bomb.
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  In my recent article, Iran’s olive branch, I demonstrate the fallacy of Netanyahu’s arguments. The fact is that Netanyahu and his government have tried to bring the Iran “nuclear threat” to the foreground in order to sideline other major issues, including the continued occupation of Palestinian lands and denying citizenship rights to its inhabitants. The fact that has been neglected is that Israel has been building hundreds of nuclear warheads and it threatens Iran with military attacks.
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  Iran’s nuclear bomb is a product of Israel’s propaganda. Since 1992, Netanyahu and current Israeli President Shimon Peres have repeatedly claimed that Iran will build a nuclear weapon over the next few years. Here are  two out of many examples:
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  1992: Israeli parliamentarian Netanyahu tells his colleagues that Iran is three to five years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon – and that the threat had to be “uprooted by an international front headed by the US”.
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  1992: Israeli Foreign Minister Peres tells French TV that Iran was set to have nuclear warheads by 1999. “Iran is the greatest threat and greatest problem in the Middle East,” Peres warned, “because it seeks the nuclear option while holding a highly dangerous stance of extreme religious militancy.”
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  After 21 years, Netanyahu is now declaring that if Iran possesses 250kg of uranium enriched at 20 percent, Israel will bomb its nuclear sites. This is while Israel possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads and is not a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). According to newly-released documents, 50 years ago,  Israel secretly received thousands of kilograms of “yellow cake”, an essential product for fueling nuclear weapons, from Argentina. Israel continues to build nuclear weapons without any monitoring or inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
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  On the other hand, Iran is a signatory to the NPT, and is under close monitoring and inspection by the IAEA.  Further, according to the NPT, member states are entitled to the peaceful use of nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment.
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  A history of military threats against Iran
  Israel has repeatedly tried to provoke the US into attacking Iran. In an interview with the Times of London on November 5, 2002, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tried to persuade the US to attack Iran. Calling Iran a “centre of world terror” that is pursuing nuclear weapons, Sharon insisted that the US put pressure on Tehran, the “day after action against Baghdad ends”.
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  In April 2003, Daniel Ayalon, then Israeli ambassador to the US, called for regime change in Iran and Syria, claiming in a conference that “it [the US] has to follow through.” In the same year, other Israeli officials spoke repeatedly about the possibility of Israeli unilateral attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites. Then Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz warned that “under no circumstances would Israel be able to tolerate nuclear weapons in Iranian possession.”
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  In January 2005, Seymour Hersh reported, “The Defence Department civilians, under the leadership of [Under-secretary of Defence for Policy] Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile targets inside Iran.”
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  read more!

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