I beg your Pardo

Regarding “Ex-Mossad chief Tamir Pardo: Netanyahu broke policy with Iran, US” (June 9), Pardo said, “we must do everything to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” but that it was a mistake for Netanyahu to call it an existential threat. Really? I guess we are in serious trouble if the ex-Mossad head does not think that Iran is an existential threat to Israel!

On the one hand, we have Michael Oren, the former Israel’s ambassador to the US during the Obama administration, who in his book Ally wrote: “Finally, after many months of attentiveness, I reached my conclusion. In the absence of a high-profile provocation – an attack on a US aircraft carrier, for example – the United States would not use force against Iran. Rather, the administration would remain committed to diplomatically resolving the Iranian nuclear issue, even at the risk of reaching a deal unacceptable to Israel. And If Israel took matters into its own hands, the White House would keep its distance and offer to defend Israel only if it were counter-struck by a hundred thousand Hezbollah missiles.”

On the other hand, we have Bernard Lewis, who said of the Iranian mullahs: “For people with this mindset, mutually assured destruction (M.A.D.) is not a constraint; it is an inducement…”

So how can Tamir Pardo say what he did? It makes no sense whatsoever.

MLADEN ANDRIJASEVIC Beersheba