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Sunday, June 19, 2016

Ya’alon as PM?

Letters to the Editor, Jerusalem Post. June 20, 2016




Only four years ago, in an interview with journalist Ari Shavit, Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon said: “The regime of the ayatollahs is apocalyptic-messianic in character.... It will be impossible to accommodate a nuclear Iran and it will be impossible to attain stability. The consequences of a nuclear Iran will be catastrophic.”

Now, he says: “At this point, and in the foreseeable future, there is no existential threat facing Israel” (“Ex-IDF chiefs attack PM: ‘Time for Netanyahu to go,’” June 17).

Has the Shiite eschatology ceased to be an existential threat to Israel overnight? As US President Barack Obama himself told National Public Radio in April 2015: “What is a more relevant fear would be that in year 13, 14, 15, they [the Iranians] have advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero.”

Moshe Ya’alon cannot foresee 13 years into the future, and he wishes to be prime minister?

MLADEN ANDRIJASEVIC Beersheba