(Ha'aretz) Nehemia Shtrasler - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the main, perhaps the only, force behind putting Iran's nuclear program on the global agenda. Were it not for him, Europe's leaders and U.S. President Barack Obama would have closed their eyes - and awakened one morning to a nuclear Iran. Israel was the only country Iran threatened to destroy. Without Netanyahu's pressure there would have never been tough sanctions, sanctions that led to economic collapse, the steep devaluation of the Iranian rial and crippling inflation that reduces the value of workers' salaries by the day. The truth is that now is precisely the time to turn up the pressure on Iran, to get it to pivot from words to deeds. For 20 years now Tehran has been playing the West for a fool, promising to permit inspections while enriching uranium, talking about civilian energy needs while developing detonators and missiles that can carry nuclear warheads. The sanctions must not be relaxed, even slightly. Instead, Iran must be forced to relinquish all of its nuclear-bomb manufacturing capacity.
2013-10-04 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive