Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon threatened to attack Iran with a nuclear bomb according to Iran’s U.N. ambassador Gholam-Ali Khoshrou.
As a follow-up, an Iranian military official made similar comments in a report Thursday by the regime’s Fars (Read: Farce] News Agency, which added that Ya’alon said Israel “will kill kids” in attacks on Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
Here is what Ya’alon actually said at a conference in Israel last week when he spoke about what steps Israel might have to take to defend itself:
We should be sure that it is a military necessity….
I do remember the story of President Truman, who was asked, ‘How did you feel after deciding to launch the nuclear bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, causing at the end [200,000 fatalities]?’ And he said, ‘When I heard from my officers that the alternative is a long war with Japan, with potential fatalities of a couple of million, I saw that it is a moral decision.’
We are not there yet. But that’s what I’m talking about: certain steps in cases in which we feel like we don’t have the answer by surgical operations or something like that.
Iranian ambassador Khoshrou concluded in a letter to the UN Security General Ban Ki-moon:
These remarks amount to the [Israeli] regime’s unwitting admission of possessing nukes.
Press TV, another Iranian propaganda organ, also decided to rewrite Ya’alon’s remarks and reported Wednesday:
Ya’alon…said that Israel might take certain steps in certain cases like what the US did in ‘Nagasaki and Hiroshima, causing at the end the fatalities of 200,000.’
For good measure, Press TV added, “Khoshrou said that Ya’alon’s explicit threat to use nuclear weapons against Iran like what the US did in Japan, and his threats of waging wars against Lebanon and Gaza further unmask the regime’s aggressive nature.”
A senior Iranian military official made up his own translation of remarks by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon
Fars News Agency reported the official’s remarks on Thursday, hours after the Pentagon announced it is selling Israel $1.2 billion sale of weapons, including bunker buster bombs that might be able to penetrate underground cement bunkers covering some of Iran’s nuclear sites.
Khoshrou’s comments and the Iranian media’s fabrications of what Ya’alon supposedly said are a treasure chest for anyone studying Propaganda 101.
Ya’alon said at the conference last week:
If I have to consider opening fire–killing someone, as a soldier, which I did–or as a commander, or today as a minister…my first consideration is what I call the mirror judgment. Whether I can look at myself in the mirror after approving the operation or executing the operation….And I can tell you, looking back, I can look at myself in the mirror.
Ya’alon admitted that soldiers sometimes engage in crimes during counter-terrorist mauves, and he stated:
In certain cases, of course, there is room for criminal investigations. But we should put the line very clearly. If we are talking about crime, like looting or raping – which didn’t happen since I’ve known the IDF — or shooting not according to the rules of engagement, namely killing, murdering, someone who wasn’t armed or didn’t threaten us, man, woman, [not to mention] kids, then there is room to launch a criminal investigation.
Fars either read the Hebrew version of Ya’alon’s comments, or more likely engaged in some very creative writing in reporting:
Ya’alon threatened that ‘we are going to hurt Lebanese civilians to include kids of the family….
In response to a question about Iran, Ya’alon said that ‘in certain cases,’ when “we feel like we don’t have the answer by surgical operations.’ Israel might take ‘certain steps’ such as the Americans did in ‘Nagasaki and Hiroshima, causing at the end the fatalities of 200,000.’
Iran’s senior military aide Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi warned today that Iran is ready to retaliate if Israel tries to attack. He said:
The Zionists and the US are aware of the power of Iran and Hezbollah, and they know that over 80,000 missiles are ready to rain down on Tel Aviv and Haifa…..The Zionists have many problems and they know that Iran is too powerful for them grapple with.
The most difficult weapon Iran has is its propaganda machine, but eventually, “The truth will out.”