Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz, a contender to succeed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, denounced his native Iran yesterday as “the root of all evil” and said its nuclear program constituted a threat to world peace.
Mofaz was speaking a day after he launched a campaign for a party leadership election next month that will lead to the replacement of Olmert.
Opinion polls show that Mofaz, who is also transport minister, is a frontrunner in the contest to lead the centrist Kadima party but trails Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit are also candidates.
Olmert, dogged for months by a corruption probe, said last week he would step down once a successor for the party leadership was chosen.
“The Iranians are the root of all evil,” Mofaz said in a live interview on Israel Radio, adding that Tehran’s nuclear program would pose “a threat to Israel’s existence.”
He urged the West anew to impose stiffer sanctions on Tehran to pressure Iran to stop a nuclear program that Israel believes is intended to produce atomic weapons. Iran says the developments are for civilian purposes only, to produce energy.
Israel is widely believed to have assembled the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal which experts say may have up to 200 warheads.
Mofaz, who was born in Tehran and moved to Israel with his family when he was nine, accused Iran of trying “simply to bide its time,” by rejecting Western proposals to stop enriching uranium.
“This has been the Iranian strategy for years, to bide their time and continue with their enrichment,” he said.
Mofaz, a former defense minister, has been one of Israel’s most outspoken ministers against Iran.
While he supports diplomacy to resolve the standoff with Tehran, Mofaz said in June an Israeli attack to halt the project may be “unavoidable” unless a deal was reached.
Meanwhile, Israel’s security Cabinet met behind closed doors yesterday to discuss its intelligence assessments that Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon have been rearming with rockets since a month-long war in 2006.
Security officials said the ministers discussed reports the guerrillas were seeking to obtain anti-aircraft missiles to fire at Israeli warplanes that fly over Lebanese territory on reconnaissance missions.
In other news, Palestinian officials — speaking on condition of anonymity — said Israeli and Palestinian leaders were to discuss how the changes under way in Israel’s leadership will affect peace talks when they met yesterday.
They said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Abbas would ask Olmert how he plans to proceed with talks.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in