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.
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