“In a speech to US Congress punctuated by standing ovations, Benjamin Netanyahu depicted Iran as a “threat to the entire world”.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31716684
Raising claims and making the wildest accusations is easy, but on what grounds does Netanyahu want to substantiate his claim or even prove it?
Unlike Israel, Iran…
– has not attacked any country for 200 years
– does not occupy foreign territory
– has no nuclear weapons
Yes, it´s true: Iran has no nuclear weapons and there are not even indications that Iran plans to build a bomb. This is not a mere claim by “naive” people who turn a blind eye on obvious truths but an assertion based on solid facts provided by the best people qualified to judge the situation and make statements: The “National Intelligence Estimate” (NIE), the creme de la creme of the American intelligence community:
“Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies. ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/world/middleeast/us-agencies-see-no-move-by-iran-to-build-a-bomb.html?_r=0
“”This deal doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb, it paves Iran’s path to the bomb,” Mr Netanyahu said, claiming Iran could have 100 nuclear bombs within five years.”
Well, why should one still trust Netanyahu?
First of all, he has been giving the same warnings for two decades now, even in the time when he was the leader of the opposition to former Premier Minister Rabin in the mid 90s.
“According to various Israeli government predictions over the years, Iran was going to have a bomb by the mid-90s — or 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, and finally 2010. More recent Israeli predictions have put that date at 2011 or 2014.”
http://www.salon.com/2010/12/05/israeli_predictions_iranian_nukes/
Also: “Netanyahu in 1992: Iran close to having nuclear bomb”
“Imminent Iran nuclear threat? A timeline of warnings since 1979.”
Second, Israels own secret service Mossad is contradicting Netanyahu:
“…the Mossad memo…dated October 22, 2012…contradicted the Israeli leader’s U.N. speech on several critical points of fact, including how far away Iran was from bomb-making capacity and whether it even had the ability to produce weapons-grade uranium.”
http://forward.com/articles/215562/benjamin-netanyahu-s-iran-exaggerations-now-clea/?utm_content=DailyNewsletter_TopArea_Position-2_Headline&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Weekly%20%2B%20Daily&utm_campaign=Weekly_Newsletter_Friday%202015-02-27
Third, his most recent lie angered the US state department:
“The state department later complained about Mr Netanyahu’s claim that Mr Kerry had “confirmed last week that Iran might legitimately possess” 190,000 centrifuges enriching uranium by the end of any deal and would be “weeks away” from an “arsenal of nuclear weapons”.
The state department said: “That’s not what Kerry said. He [said]: ‘If you have a civilian power plant that’s producing power legitimately and not a threat to proliferation, you could have as many as 190,000.””
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31722493
Apparently many high ranking members of Israels military and intelligence community do not share Netanyahus paranoic concerns:
“Iran doesn’t pose an “existential threat” to Israel, as stated by Mossad director Tamir Pardo in a December 2011 speech and repeated since then by former IDF chiefDan Halutz and former Mossad director Efraim Halevy.”
In his speech Netanyahu plunges into the history of antiquity to prove a supposed and ongoing Persian hostility towards Jews by referring to the story of Esther:
“We’ll read of a powerful Persian viceroy named Haman, who plotted to destroy the Jewish people some 2,500 years ago. But a courageous Jewish woman, Queen Esther, exposed the plot and gave for the Jewish people the right to defend themselves against their enemies.”
Netanyahus twisting of the story is brazen beyond imagination:
1. If Persians hated Jews why and how was Esther a “queen” in the Persian (Achaemenid) empire?
2. Esther, a single Jewish woman was not in a position to save the Jews. It was in fact the Persian emperor Xerxes who had the power to disempower Haman and leave the Jews unharmed.
3. Cyrus, the Great, Xerxes grand father and founder of the Persian dynasty rescued the Jews from the babylonian captivity. The story is even included in the Bible.
4. Above all, from a historical point of view the story seems to be an invention as outlined here: http://www.lobelog.com/purim-when-bad-history-makes-bad-policy/
Netanyahu laments that Americans have been killed through Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Iraq, but:
– The last time lebanese Hezbollah harmed any Americans was in the 1980s and it happened in Lebanon. Hezbollah did not attack the US elsewhere, let alone in America
– Iran has not killed any Americans in the last 30+ years. Even the hostages were all released unharmed in 1981
– Israel has indeed killed Americans
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ussliberty.html
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/06/07/alan-hart-israels-attack-on-the-uss-liberty-the-full-story/- Many American soldiers died in Iraq and Afghanistan but Iran did not attack them there and Iran did not “recommend” the US to attack those countries. It was Israel, to be more precise it was Netanyahu:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/kerry-accuses-netanyahu-of-cheerleading-2003-iraq-war/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/world/middleeast/kerry-reminds-congress-netanyahu-advised-us-to-invade-iraq.html
Netanyahu says that Iran is hardly any different than IS(IS) and tries to portray the Assad government, Hezbollah, the Iraqi Shia militias and the Yemeni Houthis as the equivalents of IS, but as a matter of fact:
– Syrias army, Hezbollah and the Iraqi Shia militias have been fighting IS and Al Qaeda (Syrias Al Nusra Front) for years. They have killed much more radical Islamists in their real and true “war on terror” than the US has done through airstrikes
– Israel has not attacked any of these Jihadi terrorists, but has shot down Syrian war planes, shelled the Syrian armys bases and given cover to the Islamists in their fight against the Syrian state
– The Houthis are fighting Al Qaeda in Yemen. The same Al Qaeda that the US occasionally bombs there, too. The Houthis have not beheaded, crucified or mass executed hundreds of disarmed prisoners. Nor have they enslaved women and children from minorities
Netanyahu said that Irans religious leader Khamenei has “twittered” for Israels elimination. While this is true, one must read carefully. Khamenei does NOT say that Jews or the Israeli population must be exterminated, nor that the country must be destroyed physically. What he is calling for is the removal of the Israeli state as the “institution” governing the geographical territory of pre-1948 Palestine. Khamenei explicitly says:
“the elimination of Israel does not mean the massacre of jewish people”. He even considers Jews inside Israel and abroad as people taking part in a future referendum about the succeeding state:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/irans-supreme-leader-ayatollah-khamenei-outlines-plan-to-eliminate-israel-9850472.html
“Elimination” surely sounds tough but it´s not different than the often requested Israeli desires for “regime change” in Iran through military means.
It might be useful to know a couple of things about Jews in Iran. After all, according to Netanyahu Iran wants to exterminate Jews. Look at this:
1. List of Synagogues in Tehran alone:https://twitter.com/GrantBrooke/status/572798502943784960/photo/1
2. Jews in todays Islamic Republic of Iran: http://theotheriran.com/tag/jews/ (Does not look like they are fearing pogroms, what?)
You won´t see Jewish Synagogues vandalized in Iran or Jewish cemeteries desecrated. Unlike Europe, by the way.
Source: Radioyaran