Haaretz
Adar 11, 5767
Israel is capable of dealing with the Iranian
threat on its own, Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman told the
Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
"Israel has the capability to deal with the Iranian threat, even
in the worst case scenario in which our friends throughout the world stop
dealing with the threat and we are left on our own," he said.
Lieberman warned that "unless Iran is contained and it is blocked
from achieving its goal, the minute it acquires non-conventional weapons
the entire Middle East will enter a mad arms race and it is therefore the
obligation of the Western world to block Iran."
The minister said
the sanctions against Iran were effective and have delivered a shock to
the Iranian economy, which is managed by 50 to 60 families holding
monopolies.
Lieberman said that sanctions should be directed at
those families by restricting their travel and limiting their banking
transactions.
He expressed hope that the sanctions would bring
about a collapse of the Iranian regime.
Lieberman, who recently
returned from a visit to Russia, said Moscow would not oppose stiffer
sanctions against Iran at the UN Security Council.
"Russia and
Israel are on one side of the barricades. I think Russia will back harsh
sanctions against Iran," Lieberman said in an interview published in the
Kommersant newspaper on Wednesday.
Russia's position regarding
Tehran has changed lately, he said.
"Everything keeps changing.
Russia was to start shipping nuclear fuel to Iran's Bushehr nuclear power
plant, but it has not done so," he said.
"The ideology professed
by Iran does boils down to the elimination of Israel alone. It conveys a
totally different approach to life," Lieberman said.