ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today that a confrontation with Iran would be “better now than later” as he ramped up the threat of war.
Mr Netanyahu accused Iran of supplying the Syrian government with advanced weaponry he said posed a danger to Israel.
Iranian assistance to the Syrian army in its war against Islamist rebel groups has led to Iranian soldiers in Syria being targeted by Israel in repeated bombing raids.
Syria has not retaliated to the periodic assaults on its territory, but its air defence systems shot down an Israeli F-16 warplane in February, prompting fury in Tel Aviv.
Iran was helping Syria “in order to attack us both on the battlefield and on the home front,” Mr Netanyahu declared.
“We are determined to block Iran’s aggression against us.”
Mr Netanyahu is pressing US President Donald Trump to renege on the 2015 nuclear deal in which Iran made commitments to restrict its civil nuclear power programme in return for sanctions being lifted.
Mr Trump is threatening to tear up the agreement, despite opposition from all other signatories — Iran, the European Union, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson travelled to Washington today to plead with the president not to scrap the deal.
Last week the Israeli PM claimed Israeli intelligence had seized documents demonstrating Iran had lied about past efforts to produce nuclear weapons.
But Iran said the documents consisted of old allegations long put to bed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Mr Netanyahu did not present any evidence that Iran had violated the agreement.
Leading British peace campaigner Lindsey German said the prime minister’s “warmongering” would make a “dangerous situation worse.”
The Stop the War Coalition convener said it was “the height of hypocrisy that opposition to nuclear arms in Iran is led by the only country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons.
“Netanyahu’s demand for immediate confrontation must be resisted at all costs. Next week sees the US embassy move to Jerusalem and Nakba Day, both of which will be explosive politically.”
The campaign to revoke the 2015 agreement was now the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East, Ms German told the Morning Star.
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