Kissinger: War with Iran must be a US decision

In 'Washington Post' interview, Nobel Prize winner says US red lines on Iran must not be used by Israel to justify war.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Henry Kissinger Interview 370 (photo credit: Screenshot)
Henry Kissinger Interview 370
(photo credit: Screenshot)
In an interview with The Washington Post on Friday, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said that any decision to go to war with Iran must be an American one, and not subcontracted to Israel.
Kissinger emphasized: "We cannot subcontract the right to go to war. That is an American decision."
Discussing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's speech to the UN General Assembly calling on the world to draw red lines on the Iranian nuclear threat, Kissinger commented: "Should we make a public announcement [on red lines] that can be used by Israel as a justification for its going to war? That we cannot do."
Kissinger, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said that the US must define what it means when it is says that nuclear weapons are unacceptable. He said the US should draw a "private red line" which can be "publicly decided in terms of tactical necessities."
The interview focused on the greatest foreign policy challenges facing the future president of the United States.
Commenting on the upcoming US elections, Kissinger revealed: "I am endorsing Governor Romney...he would conduct a responsible foreign policy. I won't go beyond that."
Last July, during a keynote speech at the opening of President Shimon Peres’s fourth annual Facing Tomorrow conference, Kissinger noted that the UN Security Council has stated for a decade that a military nuclear program in Iran was unacceptable.
While now the world powers see a need for diplomacy, Kissinger said that “a point will be reached where they will have to define what they mean by unacceptable, and how that should be implemented.”
This moment, Kissinger declared at the conference, is approaching in the months ahead, “and it is something we should all do together.”