FM: Israel will act on Iran as it did in Iraq, Syria

Liberman says public should trust decision makers with Tehran threat, accuses Abbas of trying to save himself with UN bid.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman 370 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman 370
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
Israel will handle the Iranian threat the same way it dealt with similar threats from Iraq and Syria, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said on Wednesday.
Liberman was referencing the 1981 Israeli strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor and the 2007 attack on Syria’s nuclear core at Deir al-Zor. Israel has never officially acknowledged bombing the Syrian core although it has been widely reported to have been behind the attack.
Israel “knows how to act” to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb, he said.
The public should leave the decision on how and when to act to decision-makers, the foreign minister said. “If you want to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk,” he added.
Liberman was speaking to students at the Ariel University Center, where he also asserted that the best defense against Gazan rocket attacks against southern Israel was IDF attacks on the Strip.
He slammed the international community, saying it could not be trusted to help Israel if major violence broke out.
“Anyone who trusts the international community should look at its failure to stop 22 months of Syrian violence, with 40,000 dead,” he said.
Referring to the Palestinian bid for UN recognition as a non-member state, Liberman said it was “not a diplomatic alternative to [peace] talks,” and that it crossed a red line.
He did not respond to reports of a Foreign Ministry position paper that considers ousting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as one possible response to the UN statehood bid, but he did take the opportunity to criticize Abbas.
During the talk with Ariel students, the foreign minister accused Abbas of trying to save himself politically with the bid, not his people.
Abbas had failed as a leader and had lost control of the Palestinian street, as the Palestinians were split between “Hamastan” in Gaza and “Fatahland” in the West Bank, Liberman said.