Report: INSS head says IAF capable of destroying Iranian nuclear program
Speaking at a cultural event in Beersheba, Amos Yadlin said during a speech that the "Israel Air Force can meet the challenge of exterminating Iran's nuclear reactors if necessary."
By DANIEL J. ROTHUpdated: MARCH 26, 2016 18:42Amos Yadlin(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Head of the Institute for National Security Studies [INSS] said Saturday that Israel Defense Forces were capable of destroying Iran's nuclear facilities with a preemptive strike if presented with no other alternative, according to Channel 10.Speaking at a cultural event in Beersheba, Amos Yadlin said during a speech that the "Israel Air Force can meet the challenge of exterminating Iran's nuclear reactors if necessary."Yadlin said if Israel were confronted with an "intersection where you have to choose between two alternatives: one is whether Iran will have a bomb and we do nothing... and the second is whether to conduct a preemptive action to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon," then Israel would be capable of destroying the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities.Yadlin also hinted at past successful interventions in similar cases, in which Israel was allegedly responsible for destroying Iraq's nuclear program in the early 1980's and a Syrian nuclear facility in 2007, according to foreign reports."Israel suffered a lot of criticism when an Iraqi nuclear reactor was destroyed in 1981," Yadlin said. "And in 2007, when Syria's nuclear facilities were destroyed, not everyone liked what happened, even though Israel never took responsibility for the action."Yadlin noted that if the Syrian nuclear program were still active, "it would be under Islamic State's [ISIS] control today," Channel 10 added.Yadlin ended his speech on an optimistic note, saying: "The [IDF] is the strongest in the Middle East. We have a very strong deterrence against our enemies and we have two peace agreements [Egypt and Jordan] that have been maintained despite instability in the region."
