Suddenly, the Iranian “existential threat” seems to have receded from Israel’s horizon.
It began with a bombshell Sept 18 newspaper interview in which Defense Minister Ehud Barak asserted that a nuclear-armed Iran could not destroy the Jewish state. Similar public remarks followed from the general in charge of all military operations.
Even hawkish Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman now sounds skittish about his government’s long hinted-at willingness to go to war rather than see an enemy get the means to make a bomb.
“God forbid — there’s no need to attack anything,” he told Israel’s Channel Two television on Monday.
