Netanyahu Warns World of a Nuclear Iran

FROM NEWSMAX

Netanyahu Warns World of a Nuclear Iran

Friday, April 18, 2008 11:45 AM

By: Newsmax Staff Article Font Size

Benjamin Netanyahu, the former and possibly future prime minister of Israel, said the “civilized community of nations” must not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

"This is not merely a local problem, this is a global problem. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons everything we have been talking about will pale in comparison," Netanyahu said on Wednesday.

"Their goals are unlimited. Whatever successes they have had so far, they don't intend to stop. The militant Shiites in Iran are openly boasting that they are racing to develop nuclear weapons with the explicit announced goal of wiping Israel off the face of the map, and of reestablishing the caliphate, of course under militant Iranian rule."

Netanyahu, head of the Likud opposition party, warned that a nuclear-armed Iran will put the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf under their control and could easily bring down governments or fold them into Iran's realm.

Iran's influence in the region is growing, Netanyahu said in comments reported by the Middle East Times.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite movement supported by Iran, now has some 40,000 rockets aimed at Israel.

"That's a lot more than they had before the Second Lebanon war," Netanyahu told the Times.

He said that Hezbollah's newer rockets have a much longer range and could now reach most of Israel. They are also far more lethal than those used in that Lebanon war two years ago.

"And this is all done by Iran. It cannot be understood as anything but an Iranian operation,” he added.

"I said a year and a half ago that the year is 1938 and Iran is Germany and it's racing to acquire nuclear weapons. If that's the case, were now 1939. There is about two years left before Iran becomes a nuclear power.

"The bottom line is that the army of Iran with nuclear weapons must be stopped.”

Netanyahu said "the first thing we must do – and by we, I mean the civilized community of nations – [is] to do everything in our power to prevent the arming of Iran with nuclear weapons.”

Talk has been heating up that the U.S. is preparing to take such a step. A Newsmax.com report first posted on Monday disclosed that contrary to some claims that the Bush administration will allow diplomacy to handle Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a leading member of America’s Jewish community told Newsmax that a military strike is not only on the table – but likely.

Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent trip through the Middle East came in preparation for the U.S. attack, the source said.

And President Bush said in a speech at the White House on April 10 that Iran, along with al-Qaida, are “two of the greatest threats to America.”

Iran announced on April 8 that it had begun installing 6,000 new centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz.

Centrifuges can enrich uranium to a low level to produce nuclear fuel — or a high level for use in weapons.