(Jerusalem Post) Yoni Dayan - Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in an interview with CNN's Kristiana Amanpour on Thursday: "I am realistic enough to not be so optimistic about talks with Iran. The Iranians have a history of deceiving the world, sometimes through steps like this. So we are a little bit skeptical." "It is clear that the Iranians are focused on reaching nuclear capability, and they are ready to defy and deceive the whole world." "The sanctions are quite effective, but are far away from working." He added that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomenei had probably not yet given the order to start actually building a nuclear bomb, but said this was because they feared this would lead to a military strike. Barak said that if Iran were to stop enriching uranium past 20%, move their 20% enriched uranium to a friendly country, decommission their installation in Qom, and agree to IAEA conditions, Israel would be satisfied. "This should be the threshold," he said. "I don't want to drag the United States into anything," he added, saying that there is no difference in Israeli and U.S. intelligence assessments of Iran.
2012-04-20 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive