The Final Move Beyond Iraq: The Final Solution While the World Sleeps (30 page)

MDE
:

Talk to me about Iran’s involvement with the recent outbreak of fighting in southern Lebanon.

Mr. Netanyahu
:

I think there is no question that Hezbollah would not last a day without Iranian support—and, of course, Syrian support. They have been funding them, directing them, arming them, inspiring them, and there is no question that of the two, Iran is the more serious threat. It is guided now by a mad Shiite militancy that wants to throw the world back one thousand years—I was going to say to medieval times, but it is almost premedieval times—and to do this with an apocalyptic slaughter of millions. They have this creed, which you think would already have passed from the world. After all, three hundred years ago was the end of the religious wars, but they want to reconstruct it.
The danger is, as you can see, we’ve been given a wake-up call here. Using their proxies in Lebanon, and coincidentally in Gaza, the Hamas—they are rocketing Israeli cities with these weapons they have now. Imagine what would happen later if Iran were to have missiles that would reach into every European capital within a decade, into the eastern coast of the U.S., and would be armed not with explosives but with nuclear weapons. I think that is a very grim possibility for the world. I think this has to be stopped. I think it has to be stopped today by a division of labor. Israel will deal with Hezbollah, cutting its military force and dismantling its missile arsenal, and the U.S. should deal with Syria and especially with Iran by applying massive international pressure on them. Down the line, I think the most important statement is the one President Bush and Vice President Cheney have made, that Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. And when you see Israel’s cities being hurled by Iran’s proxies, to understand that we are just the forward position. They are really after you, not after us. We are just the front position of the West.

MDE
:

We have proxies that are attacking your country, and no one is using the word “Iran” any longer. Is it possible that if America sleeps that America could be experiencing proxies coming across our borders?

Mr. Netanyahu
:

Yes, but the more likely thing you would experience is a world we don’t even want to contemplate. Up until now, nuclear weapons have been in the hands of responsible regimes. You have one regime, one bizarre regime, that apparently has them now in North Korea. There aren’t a billion North Koreans that people seek to inspire into a religious war. That’s what Iran could do. It could inspire the two hundred million Shiites. That’s what they intend to do—inspire them into a religious war, first against other Muslims, then against the West.
The reason they despise us so much, the reason they want to eradicate us, is that they don’t hate you because of us; they hate us because of you. They say we are the “Small Satan” and that America is the “Great Satan.” Europe is the “Middle-Sized Satan,” although they don’t know it. It is important to understand that they could impose a direct threat to Europe and to the United States—and to Israel, obviously. They don’t hide it. They don’t even hide the fact that they intend to take on the West.
The only thing they are hiding is their nuclear program, which is being exposed by the international community. Many think that what they’ve done in Lebanon was merely a decoy strategy to deflect attention to growing pressure to their nuclear program. So we have to have our eyes fixed on the two objectives: one, dispatch Iran’s proxy in Lebanon and give Lebanon a hope for the future, and give Israel security; but equally, deal with Iran’s nuclear and missile program while there is still time, while that regime has not armed itself with weapons of mass death.

MDE
:

On 9/11 you spoke to the nation and you described 9/11 as a “wake-up call from hell.” What would America look like and what could happen to our nation if Iran goes nuclear?

Mr. Netanyahu
:

Iran has said in unequivocal terms that, first of all, its target is Israel, and they do it with a particular brand of malevolence because they deny that the Holocaust took place—the murder of six million Jews—while they’re openly declaring their intention to create another holocaust to destroy the six million Jews of Israel. Number one, Israel could be in great jeopardy. Number two, so will everybody else. That is, in short order, the Western-oriented regimes of the Middle East would fall by the wayside. That is why you see the Arab countries are siding against Iran, against Hezbollah, because they understand what I am saying. So, the Middle East could be taken over, and that means the oil fields—the oil spigot of the world—would be in Iranian hands. If you are worried about oil prices today, and what that does to the Western economy, just think about tomorrow. And number three, of course, is the ability of Iran to use its nuclear arsenal and its missile arsenal to threaten Europe and the U.S. directly.
Make no mistake about it: their mad, apocalyptic vision would be perfectly possible for them to do. This is not the Soviet Union; this is not China. These are not rational forces. Whatever you could say about the Soviet Union, it acted fairly carefully on the world scene. Every time their ideology of world domination conflicted with their survival, they always backed off…in Cuba, in Berlin. They always backed off; they were very rational in that regard. But you can’t count on the ayatollahs of the world, armed with nuclear weapons, to back off. They often prefer their zeal over their survival. Have you ever heard of a Communist suicide bomber? No. But militant Islam produces battalions of them, and they smash into buildings in Manhattan, and they smash into the Pentagon, into U.S. warships, into buses, schools—you name it. So, this is a different ideology; it is a different threat. It must not be allowed to be armed. It is the new barbarians who are seeking the weapons of mass death, and we have all been forewarned. This is another wake-up call. That’s all it is.

MDE
:

What was going through the minds of the nineteen who attacked America on 9/11, and what is in the minds of the Islamic Fascists in Iran? Is it any different?

Mr. Netanyahu
:

It is a particular creed, and the creed that guides Iran is a particular brand of Shiism. Shiism dates back to the early years of Islam and the battle for the inheritance of Muhammad’s legacy. It was a splinter group that lost out from the main trajectory of Islam that went to the Sunnis. It had a kind of mystical leader, the Mahdi, who was a great religious leader that disappeared about a thousand years ago. This Mahdi will come back in a great apocalyptic war that will claim the lives of millions. It almost mandates this kind of conflagration, and you really don’t want the only country in the world with 90 percent Shiites, Iran among them, the most extreme part of this religious sect, to acquire the horrific weapons of atomic bombs and missiles to carry out their twisted ideology. It is very dangerous; people don’t realize.

MDE
:

Do they think they can usher him in with an apocalypse?

Mr. Netanyahu
:

That’s what they think.

MDE:

A Christian thinks of the coming of Jesus Christ as the blessed hope. So, you are saying there is an Islamic faction that would prefer a mushroom cloud in Israel and America, a world without Zionism and America, and that somehow they think we are all going to submit to Islam?

Mr. Netanyahu
:

Prefer, no! That’s what they want; it’s not a preference. It’s like they are ordered to do it. This is the danger of this creed. It’s not a choice; it is almost like an order from Allah. That’s why these people are willing to commit suicide. The question is: do we have suicidal regimes? Do we have regimes that will actually go the distance for this mad apocalyptic vision, believing they will somehow inherit paradise while they sow hell for everybody else and for their people as well? The answer is that this is probably the first time that such a mad militancy on a global scale would seek to acquire weapons of mass death. There was, sixty years ago, another mad militancy, Hitlerism, that was racing to produce the bomb but happily was defeated before this happened. Imagine a world in which Hitler had atomic bombs. That’s pretty much the world you could have if the ayatollahs have atomic bombs.

MDE
:

Having served as the prime minister of Israel and also the ambassador of Israel to the UN, this president of Iran spoke to the UN about the second coming of the Twelfth Mahdi, and he wrote an eighteen-page letter to the president of the United States, challenging him to convert to Islam. As a world leader, what in the world would cause a president of a country to write the president of the United States such a bizarre letter?

Mr. Netanyahu
:

It is precisely this mad ideology that people underrate. They think that this is a normal country with a normal susceptibility to the calculation of cost and benefit—basically a country that operates on the world scene with a modicum of responsibility. That’s not the case. Iran is an outlaw state. It fans terrorism and militancy worldwide. It is now organizing the rocketing of civilians in Israel because Hezbollah without Iran collapses in two seconds. And it is preparing to be able to launch atomic warheads into an enormous radius. It’s not just targeting Israel. If they only wanted Israel, they would not build those long-range rockets that now can pretty much cover every European capital and soon will cover the U.S.

MDE
:

Is it a coincidence that your soldiers were taken hostage, that Katyushas were fired at your nation during the same period of time that President Bush was going to the G8 to try to put pressure on Iran?

Mr. Netanyahu
:

It has been said, not without reason, that Iran used this ploy of kidnapping and murdering our soldiers by two of its proxies, Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north of Israel, to deflect international attention from its nuclear program. I think this may work in the short-term, but I think it will backfire in the mid-term. I think right now people in America, not only the president of the U.S. and the American administration, but I think people in America and in other countries can start asking themselves, “Wait a minute; is this what is in store for us?”
If they are willing to do this to Israel, which they openly say is merely a surrogate for the U.S.—that’s the way they view it—then you know what they have in mind for America—and that’s what underlines everything we are talking about. This is undoubtedly in their view a skirmish in a larger war, and the larger war is not against Israel. It begins with Israel, but just as was the case with the Nazis, you begin with the Jews, then you proceed to everyone else.

MDE
:

How important is Christian support for the State of Israel at this time?

Mr. Netanyahu
:

I think it’s fundamentally important. But the fact is that we are very lucky that in the U.S. there is a great body of citizenry that understands that we have a common heritage. It is a heritage of freedom, of respecting individual rights, of respecting individual conscience, of allowing choice, of protecting freedom and democracy—and that comes from many quarters in the U.S., and most especially from many in the evangelical community and others across the political spectrum. The U.S. in this regard is different. It’s different from Europe because it has a core belief.
America, like Israel, was built as the Promised Land, almost the new Promised Land. It is a carrier of so many universal values of freedom and justice that the Jewish people gave the world. I think that this is one of the great blessings of our time, that the world in the beginning of the twenty-first century is being led by the U.S. The first half of the twentieth century, the world was not led by the U.S., and the consequences were horrible indeed—World War II and the Holocaust. I think we are fortunate that the U.S. today is leading the world because it has its moral sights very, very clear.

MDE
:

When you were prime minister, we had a president in office that did not respond to you with moral clarity. At this present moment, we have a president in office that is responding to the State of Israel with moral clarity. How important is that?

Mr. Netanyahu
:

I think it’s all-important. I think in America everyone wanted to see, through a change in administration, peace for Israel and security for Israel. And that is not changing, but what is required is to identify the source of the threat. Leadership is charged with two great tasks: to identify the threat to a society or a country, or a civilization, and to see the opportunity to protect it and make it survive and thrive. And I think, right now, America has such leadership. I think the world right now has such leadership.