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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Olmert likens Iran leader to Hitler |
| 2006-05-01 |
| ISRAEL'S prime minister-designate Ehud Olmert has denounced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a "psychopath" and said the West would never permit Iran to obtain a nuclear bomb. "Ahmadinejad talks today like Hitler spoke before seizing power," said Mr Olmert in an interview with the German newspaper Bild. "We are dealing with a psychopath of the worst kind, with an anti-Semite. God forbid this man from ever getting his hands on nuclear weapons." The Israeli leader indicated, however, that the matter was not being left in God's hands alone. Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, travelled to Washington last week to meet the CIA and pass on Israel's latest findings on Iran's nuclear progress. According to Israeli sources, Jerusalem believes that Iran is closer to nuclear capability than is generally realised. An Israeli satellite launched last week from a Russian cosmodrome in Siberia began sending high-resolution photographs over the weekend which Israeli experts termed "amazing". However, Mr Dagan's report in Washington was based on information acquired earlier. In Mr Olmert's interview with Bild, he indicated that Israel did not intend to take the lead in the confrontation with Iran, leaving that to the international community. "The West, above all under the leadership of the United States, will ensure that Iran under no circumstances comes to possess unconventional weapons," he said. If, however, the West fails to take action, Israel has always left open the possibility that it would itself launch an attack against Iranian nuclear development facilities. "When I read the recent (intelligence) reports regarding Iran," said Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset's foreign affairs and defence committee, "I saw a monster in the making." The committee oversees Mossad. London's Sunday Times quoted an Israeli source yesterday as saying that Mossad had evidence of hidden uranium-enrichment sites in Iran "which can shortcut their timetable in the race for their first bomb". The source said Mr Dagan presented US officials with Mossad's evidence and told them: "This is what we know and this is what we'll do if you continue to do nothing." The International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report early on Saturday accusing Tehran of failing to comply with a UN Security Council deadline to freeze its nuclear fuel enrichment and instead defiantly speeding up its nuclear activities. The eight-page IAEA report said Iran had drastically curtailed its co-operation with inspectors, making it increasingly difficult to track Tehran's nuclear program. The agency expressed deep concern over the "gaps" in its knowledge about Iran's centrifuge program and the role of Iran's military in nuclear development. Iranian leaders took a defiant stance. The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, said Iran's uranium enrichment program was "irreversible". Former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said the world had to adjust to a new situation as it had regarding Galileo's theory of the universe. "Back then, no one believed his theory, but now we all revolve around the sun," he said. US President George W. Bush, who has pointedly kept alive the military option if all else fails to stop Iran's nuclear program, issued a restrained statement following the IAEA finding. "Iran's desire to have a nuclear weapon is dangerous," he said, but a diplomatic solution would be sought. This effort, Mr Bush said, was "just beginning". The US is preparing to seek a UN resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter which would make the UN's demands on Iran mandatory. The chapter leaves open the possibility of military action as a last resort. Last week, Mr Ahmadinejad said he did "not give a damn" about UN resolutions. The Iranian leader has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and expressed doubts that the Holocaust ever occurred. Although Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Mr Ahmadinejad had been referring only to the fall of the Israeli regime, the Iranian President earlier this month called Israel "a rotten, dried tree" that would be swept away by "one storm". |
| Posted by:Oztralian |
| #3 Unfortunately this comparison suffers from the boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome. It's been so debased through ridiculous gratuitous overuse, that people don't take it seriously when it actually does apply. |
| Posted by: Xbalanke 2006-05-01 14:10 |
| #2 Everybody gets to be Hitler for fifteen minutes. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2006-05-01 09:57 |
| #1 So he's like Bush, then? |
| Posted by: Jackal 2006-05-01 09:56 |