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Israel Accuses Iran of "Nuclear Blackmail" and Asks the West to Devise a "Credible" Military Threat
(Telegraph-UK) Con Coughlin - Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid warned in an interview with the Telegraph that Israel and its Western allies must devise a credible military threat to deter Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapons arsenal. "If the Iranians think the world does not seriously intend to stop them, they will race towards the bomb," said Lapid. "There needs to be a credible military threat on the table." Lapid insisted that Israel's preferred outcome was a negotiated settlement. "Israel hopes for a permanent and comprehensive solution to the Iranian nuclear threat," he said. During his recent talks in London, Lapid set out a comprehensive plan for dealing with Tehran, including tighter sanctions and tighter supervision of Iran's nuclear activities, arguing that the West needed "a plan for Iran's continued intransigence....Iran must be diplomatically and politically isolated." "While we in Israel focus on building bridges between peoples, Iran is busy trying to build a bridge of terrorism from Iran, through Iraq and Syria to Israel's border," he added. "Iran and its proxies are constantly working to undermine regional stability." "A nuclear Iran...will not only mean nuclear weapons in the hands of a fundamentalist, brutal regime: it will also embolden Iran's terrorist proxies to further expand their terrorist activity across the region and the entire world, including into Europe."