Tension Between Israel and Iran Palpable at U.N.
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
UNITED NATIONS – The question of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities was at the top of the agenda yesterday, as top world diplomats conducted a whirlwind of bilateral meetings, the meat of their annual gathering at the United Nations.
“Be sure that any action by Israel certainly will be reacted [to] by us,” Iran’s foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, told a small group of reporters last night, after emerging from a meeting with the British foreign minister, Jack Straw.
His defiant statement came after neither Israel’s foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, nor Secretary of State Powell excluded the possibility when directly confronted by questions about an attack against Iran similar to the one Israel carried against Iraq in 1981.
Speculation grew yesterday after several news reports cited Israeli “security sources,” saying that America intends to sell Israel a $319 million package of air-launched bombs, including 500 BLU-109s, also known as “bunker busters,” which could be very effective in an air attack against heavily fortified Iranian nuclear facilities.
“I am not aware of any plans to attack Iran,” Mr. Powell told reporters when asked if America would approve of an Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear sites, adding immediately, “Every nation has all options available to it.”
This did not sound to diplomacy watchers like a warning for Israel to avoid such an attack, a speculation that remained even after Mr. Powell went on to highlight the ongoing diplomatic efforts to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. Iran, from its side, blamed Israel. “Israel [has] always been a threat, not only against Iran but the whole of the Middle East,” Mr. Kharrazi said. The main conflict in the region, he contended, derives from Israel’s “freedom to produce as much as they need – nuclear bombs as well as other weapons of mass destruction.”
For the record, Israel says that its favored option is not militaristic but diplomatic. “After many years that everyone thought the Iranian threat is directed against Israel alone, everyone understands now that the whole world is threatened,” Mr. Shalom told the Sun, citing Iranian development of long range missiles that now, he said, can reach “London, Berlin, and Southern Russia.”
