Israel must prepare for Iran threat: Olmert: US warns of unilateral sanctions
HAIFA, Aug 28: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday that the Jewish state must prepare to deal with the ‘threat’ posed by Iran. “We have to be prepared for the threat of Iran and its president who hates Israel,” he said in the northern city of Haifa, which came under heavy rocket attack from the Hezbollah during Israel’s war in Lebanon.
“We don’t have the luxury to spend years of investigations that has nothing to do with learning lessons and preparing for the future,” the prime minister added in his speech to a conference of mayors.
“This was not only a war against Hezbollah,” Mr Olmert said, alleging that Iran and Syria had helped arm the militant group.
Israel accuses Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear arsenal under cover of its civilian atomic programme. Israel refuses to confirm or deny reports over its own alleged nuclear arsenal.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has on several occasions described the Holocaust as a ‘myth’ and has threatened to wipe Israel off the map.
Israel has accused Iran and Syria of helping arm Hezbollah, a charge denied by both countries.
US RENEWS THREAT: Three days before a UN Security Council deadline for Iran to halt uranium enrichment or face possible sanctions, the United States on Monday again raised the prospect of unilateral sanctions against Tehran.
“The question of what to do about Iran is certainly not confined to the Security Council,” US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told reporters here, echoing views he already expressed in an interview last week.
“You can envision sanctions being imposed outside of the Security Council as the United States has unilaterally imposed sanctions on Iraq pursuing to its own statutes ... Other governments can do the same,” he said after attending a closed-door meeting on the Darfur crisis.
Late last week, he told the Los Angeles Times newspaper that ‘everybody’s been on board’ on the Security Council over Iran, but in case Russia and China did not accept any resolution, the United States was working on a parallel diplomatic track.
On Friday, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said talk of introducing sanctions against Iran after its rejection of a demand by world powers to freeze uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities was as yet ‘premature’.
“It is at least premature and unsound to speak of sanctions” as of now, Ivanov was quoted as saying by the ITAR-TASS news agency.
“In any case, Russia will continue to urge a political and diplomatic resolution (of the Iran nuclear problem), with the non-proliferation regime observed fully and harshly,” Ivanov said.
The Security Council has given Iran an Aug 31 deadline to suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities, and an impasse looms with Iran insisting it has no intention of abandoning such work.
But Tehran has also made clear it remains keen to hold talks with all the key players over its nuclear ambitions, including even its foe the United States.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is to issue a report on that date after verifying whether Tehran has complied with the deadline.
Western countries suspect Iran is seeking to acquire a covert nuclear weapons capability under the guise of a civilian atomic program which Tehran says is aimed only at generating electricity.—AFP