'We should have attacked Iran - no doubt about it' says senior Arab-affairs correspondent

With Iran and other global powers meeting to discuss the possible removal of sanctions against the Islamic regime, all the eyes of the world are on Vienna. Three years after the Trump administration took the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal, it appears likely that President Joe Biden will rejoin the JCPOA – and what will that mean for Israel?

On Tuesday, Channel 13 News’ Arabic-affairs correspondent, Tzvi Yehezkeli, discussed the latest developments on Radio 103FM and accused Israel of being partially responsible for the current situation, for the simple reason that no decision has been made to attack Iran.

“The Syrians once had a nuclear program, just like the Iranians do,” he said, “and now look what happened, after we told the world what was going on without attacking. We didn’t necessarily have to wipe them out,” he noted.

“Today,” Yehezkeli continued, “the Iranians are just a short distance away from getting the bomb. That’s what they’re discussing now in the negotiations – the fact that the Iranians are closer to getting the bomb than ever before, and that’s what’s going to cause the rest of the world to capitulate,” he predicted.

In his opinion, Israel should recognize that the real issue here is that the negotiations that are currently ongoing “depend a lot on the Iranians themselves, who want to get the other countries to back down. They want money to be able to continue with their projects. Either that will happen, or they won’t get the money they want, they won’t go back to the deal, and instead they will frighten the rest of the world with the prospect of them getting the bomb.

“The solution at hand is for Biden to activate the second option which is the carrot-stick approach,” he added.

Yehezkeli noted that, “If it was up to me, I would demonstrate our capabilities, which is something that can impress the Iranians, if we do something that shows them just how wide our reach is, if we manage to hit something they didn’t think we could touch. A cyber attack, for instance – but not a high-intensity attack. How can we tolerate a situation in which a senior Iranian official states openly that their goal is to destroy the State of Israel? What I would do is turn up the volume of cyber attacks on Iran,” he stressed.

“We could be hitting far deeper at Iran’s nuclear programs,” he added, “because we’re already in an emergency situation. And soon enough, it will be a genuine emergency.”