(Washington Post) Lally Weymouth - Excerpts from Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon's interview with Lally Weymouth: We consider the [Iranian nuclear] deal a very bad one. There is no doubt that the Iranians’ intention and all of their activities in the last 20 years were in order to reach a military nuclear capability. The deal is going to allow Iran to actually become a military nuclear threshold state. No facilities are going to be shut down, including underground facilities. No centrifuges will be destroyed. They will be able to go on with their research and development to have in the near future - whether it be 10 years or whatever - advanced centrifuges with a better capability to enrich uranium. They haven’t exposed [that] there was a weaponization part of the project. We have hard evidence about it. This rogue regime in Iran is ready to sacrifice a lot in order to export the revolution and to gain hegemony in the region by being active in Afghanistan and in Iraq. In Syria, they support Bashar al-Assad, and in Lebanon, they support Hizbullah. In the Gaza Strip, they support Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In Yemen, they support the Houthis. What’s next on their list? Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Dhahran, the area of the oil resources of Saudi Arabia, which is dominated by a Shia population. Iran is active over there undermining these regimes. They already control the Hormuz Straits, and now they are trying to control the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb in the Red Sea. The Iranian idea is to dominate the region. The last element that is [left] out of the deal is the missiles. They have missiles that can cover all of Israel. It is not discussed. Bashar al-Assad is losing ground. He governs or controls less than 25 percent of the former Syrian territory. He’s concentrating along the shore - the Alawite enclave - Damascus, and a couple of towns. But he lost the eastern part of Syria. The Kurds enjoy autonomy in the northeastern part of Syria. He lost Aleppo, and Latakia is threatened now. We have the Islamic State now in the eastern part of Syria.
2015-06-04 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive