EJC president slams European firms dealing with Iran
In new book, Moshe Kantor warns Iranian nuclear program would deal a death blow to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
By YAAKOV LAPPIN
European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor has, in a new book, blasted hundreds of European companies for “cooperating with nuclear3 weapons-hungry Iran.”In the book, Manifesto on Secure Tolerance, Kantor compared European firms trading with the Islamic Republic to “Nazi industrialists and scientists” who “all but brought Hitler close to the nuclear bomb and appropriate delivery vehicles by 1945.”Kantor also heads the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe, which periodically gathers top security experts to discuss proliferation concerns and ways to boost global security.In his book, he warned that Iran’s nuclear program would eventually deal a death blow to the Non-Proliferation Treaty if left unchecked and trigger a Middle Eastern nuclear arms race.“Many of these countries are unstable and balancing on the brink of radicalization,” Kantor wrote.“This dramatically lowers the threshold of nuclear weapons use in regional or internal conflicts with a high probability of escalation to the global level in the near future,” he added.Kantor also examined the threat of a crude atomic terrorist device detonated in a Western capital, which he said would turn “the entire civilized world into a hostage of terrorists.”He called for the creation of a Euro-Atlantic bloc, including the US, Europe, Russia, as well as China and India, to confront the threat of proliferation.During a meeting of the Luxembourg Forum in Moscow earlier this month, former US Secretary of Defense William Perry endorsed Israeli assessments that put Iran’s nuclear weapons program just months away from crossing a point of no return.Perry’s comments were later echoed by senior American defense officials, including US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.