October 08, 2021
Israel does not have the military capabilities needed to strike and permanently eliminate Iran’s nuclear program, as it did in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says, undercutting the frequent talk in Israel about an impending attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.
And only days later, Maj. Gen. Tamir Hayman, Israel’s outgoing military intelligence chief, said his organization has not found any Iranian progress on developing a nuclear weapon and judges that Iran is still two years away from being able to build one.
Writing in the daily Haaretz, Olmert also said the policy adopted by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the past few years and the repeated warnings that Iran is on the verge of becoming a “nuclear power” are incorrect, because “intensive and accelerated uranium enrichment does not necessarily turn Iran to being on the verge of becoming a nuclear state.”
Olmert, who criticized what he called creating unnecessary fear and panic, added that Iran was always within a few months of producing the needed quantities of enriched uranium to make a bomb. However, he wrote, Iran lacks the ability to make a deliverable nuclear weapon that is, a weapon small enough to fit on one of Iran’s missiles.
Olmert said it will take Iran a long time to become a nuclear-weapon-capable country.
Israeli planes can reach Iran but not return without refueling. A question is whether the Arab states now recognizing Israel would be willing to refuel Israeli planes.
Olmert was prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, when he was succeeded by Netanyahu.
