Ex-Mossad Chief: Israel Should Think Twice Before Attacking Iran

• Ex-Mossad Chief: Israel Should Think Twice Before Attacking Iran
  by https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/
  Tel Aviv should refrain from attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities unless it has the capacity to completely destroy them, the former head of Israel’s Military Intelligence, Tamir Pardo, said yesterday.
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  Speaking at a panel at Reichman University’s Institute for Policy and Strategy conference in Herzliya, Pardo warned that a military strike on Iran’s nuclear programme would be far more complicated than the Israeli Air Force’s successful attacks on Iraq and Syria reactors.
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  “If it is not possible to close this business as we did in Operation Opera [against Iraq’s nuclear program in 1981], then we’d better think twice,” he said.
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  READ: Israel says it will not be bound by Iran nuke deal
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  Speaking at the same panel, ex-Mossad chief Amos Yadlin said for the last decade, Tel Aviv’s policy on Iran’s nuclear programme was decided personally by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu without consultation.
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  “The Iranian issue was privatised to one person,” said Yadlin, adding that the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six other countries, including the United States, kept the Islamic Republic from making meaningful progress in its nuclear programme.
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  “The mistake is not in 2015, but in 2018 when they [the United States] left the deal in its good years,” he added.

• Israel Has 80-90 Nukes, SIPRI Report Says, as Tel Aviv Continues to Accuse Iran of Nuclear Obsession
  by https://www.rt.com/
  Israel, which routinely accuses Iran of trying to obtain nuclear weapons and pledges to use force to stop Tehran, maintains its own undeclared nuclear arsenal estimated at 80 to 90, according to the latest report by SIPRI.
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  There are nine nations in the world that currently have nuclear weapons, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) says in its newly released yearbook on the state of armaments and international security. The world nuclear stockpile went from 14,465 at the beginning of last year to about 13,865 this year, the report estimates, as the US and Russia were delivering on their promises under the New START Treaty signed in 2010.
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  Israel, which maintains a policy of neither confirming nor denying the possession of nuclear weapons, has between 80 and 90 warheads in its stockpile, the same as the year before, the institute said.
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  It comes as tensions between Iran on one side, and the US and regional ally Israel on the other, continue to mount. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s unsinkable prime minister, has for years waged a campaign accusing the Iranians of having unwavering nuclear ambitions, regardless of the evidence, or lack thereof.
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“Iran doesn’t frighten me and I don’t think it should frighten the American people. They don’t have a bomb. They haven’t made a decision to build one. They don’t have the means to deliver one. And the Israelis have 300 atomic bombs! I mean who presents the existential threat to whom?” – Pat Buchanan (7:58 onwards)

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