Netanyahu Allocates Almost $3 Billion for Iran Attack

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon have reportedly ordered the military to continue preparing for a possible strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Three Knesset members who were present at Knesset joint committee hearings on Israel Defense Forces plans said that at least 10 billion shekels ($2.89 billion) of the defense budget would be allocated this year for preparations for the strike on Iran, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

After an interim accord between Iran and six world powers was reached, Netanyahu stressed that Israel will not consider itself bound by it. Netanyahu in fact is again making implied threats about a possible unilateral Israeli strike.

"My friends, I believe that letting Iran enrich uranium would open up the floodgates," Netanyahu said at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington earlier this month. "That must not happen. And we will make sure it does not happen."

Ya'alon said in a recent speech at Tel Aviv University that he is now likely to back a unilateral strike on Iran in light of his assessment that the Obama administration will not do so, according to Haaretz.

"We think the United States should be the one leading the campaign against Iran," he said. "But the U.S. has entered talks with them and unfortunately, in the haggling in the Persian bazaar, the Iranians were better.

"Therefore on this matter we have to behave as though we have nobody to look out for us but ourselves."

The second round of nuclear talks opened in Vienna on Tuesday with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in attendance along with senior diplomats from the six powers — the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany.

Zarif wrote in an opinion piece for Britain's Financial Times that the six powers have agreed to seek a "mutually acceptable agreement" after realizing that "coercion, pressure and sanctions only result in more centrifuges, more resentment and deeper mistrust."

 

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