‘I stopped Netanyahu from attacking Iran:’ Peres claim

TRISTIN HOPPER

NATIONAL POST

In an admission he said could only be published after his death, former Israeli president Shimon Peres said in 2014 he personally stopped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from attacking Iran.

“I stopped Netanyahu from attacking Iran,” Peres told Steve Linde, then-editor-in-chief of the

during an Aug. 24, 2014 conversation in Jaffa, the newspaper reported Friday.

When pressed for more, Peres responded, “I don’t want to go into details, but I can tell you that he was ready to launch an attack and I stopped him. I told him the consequences would be catastrophic.”

He then asked, with a “wry smile,” that the comments be kept secret until after his death. The comments are based on Linde’s notes.

Peres held the largely ceremonial role of Israeli president between 2007 and July 2014, a period of high Iran-Israeli tensions.

In September 2012, Netanyahu appeared before the United Nations General Assembly holding a cartoon bomb and declaring Iran was mere months from obtaining a nuclear bomb.

“At this late hour, there is only one way to peacefully prevent Iran from getting atomic bombs and that’s by placing a clear red line on Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” he said.

It is not known what kind of action Netanyahu may have been planning, but it presumably would have been a limited strike similar to Operation Opera, a surprise 1981 Israeli airstrike on Iraqi nuclear facilities.

Last October, a éxposé revealed that, in the early 2010s, the U.S. had readied extra fighter aircraft in the Middle East in case “all hell broke loose” after a possible Israeli attack on Iran. U.S. officials suspected Israel was preparing for a commando raid on Fordow, a fortified Iranian uranium enrichment facility.

In a military and political career stretching over seven decades, Peres wasatthecentreofmanyofthemajor events of Israeli history, including the 1956 Suez War and the negotiation of the 1993 Oslo Accords.

He is also credited as being the architect of the Jewish state’s nuclear program. Although Israel has never officially confirmed it has nuclear weapons, it is widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear power.

As a member of the liberal Kadima party, Peres’ views often differed sharply with those expounded by Netanyahu and other members of his right-wing governing coalition.

During a 2012 visit to Toronto, for instance, Peres called for patience with Iran.