Israeli PM: With no credible military threat, Iran to become nuclear power

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that history has shown that in the absence of a credible military threat or actual military action, Iran will become a nuclear power.

Netanyahu made the remarks during an interview with professor Walter Russell Mead at the Hartog National Security Conference, which was attended by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, according to JNS.

Netanyahu began by recapping the recent history of countries that pursued nuclear weapons.

“You had one, that’s called Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It was stopped by military force—ours. You had a second one, that is called Syria, that tried to develop nuclear weapons. And it was stopped by military action—ours. There was a third country, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. It wanted to pursue nuclear weapons and it gave it up [due to] the threat of military action—yours [the United States]. There’s a fourth country, North Korea, that sought to develop nuclear weapons, and it wasn’t challenged. They weren’t stopped, because there was no threat of military action. And so they developed this capacity,” said the prime minister.