Iran DM: Israel Should Draw ‘Red Line’ For Its Own Nuclear Program

Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi pressed for international accountability on Israel's undeclared nukes

Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said Saturday that Israel should draw a “red line” for itself, instead of Iran, according to AFP.

In the context of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the United Nations General Assembly, Vahidi said that “if having the atomic bomb is passing the red line, the Zionist regime, that possesses dozens of nuclear warheads and weapons of mass destruction, has passed the red line years ago, and it has to be stopped.”

Netanyahu has been on an aggressive political and media campaign to get the United States to outline “red lines” in Iran’s nuclear program, beyond which would warrant military action. This, despite the fact that Iran has no nuclear weapons program.

The controversy about some imaginary Iranian nuke has long been hyped out of proportion, with hawks warning about all the dire consequences of a nuclear Iran. But Israel possesses a significant arsenal of deliverable nuclear weapons itself, which are not officially acknowledged and are hidden from international inspectors.

“Is the occupying and aggressor Zionist regime that possesses nuclear weapons more dangerous? Or an Iran that doesn’t have nuclear weapons and which insists more than anybody on nuclear disarmament, and seeks only to have peaceful nuclear energy abiding by international rules?” Vahidi reportedly asked.

Iran has indeed repeatedly called for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East, something Israel has balked at for decades.

Author: John Glaser

John Glaser writes for Antiwar.com.