Thank you for coming, Mr. Prime Minister. You've had a long flight and I've had a long last day and a half. Let's not waste any time with veiled questions and coy answers. Your government conducted an atmospheric nuclear test over the Indian Ocean 36 hours ago. This action poses enormous problems for the region, for the world.
And for the U.S.
Yes. It undercuts our counterproliferation policy and makes us look at best, biased, and at worst, like outright hypocrites.
You do not look hypocritical espousing nonproliferation while funding research on a new generation of tactical nuclear bombs? This is not my view. The U.S. is merely looking after its national interest. As Israel has the right to do.
Proliferation breeds proliferation. China's bomb produced India's. India's begat Pakistan's.
The United States' ideal number of nuclear weapon states is one. No matter if it's merited or arrogant, it is irrelevant. Our chief of Military Intelligence asserts that if Iran completes its enrichment program it will be able to produce nuclear weapons within one year.
No one disputes Israel lives under threat.
Threat? We are 6 million surrounded by 200 million who wish us obliterated. For Israel, deterrence is not an option, but an imperative.
There's a fine line between deterrence and provocation.
We model our approach on America's during the Cold War: Mutual Assured Destruction.
There's a reason its acronym was MAD.
It succeeded entirely in keeping the world safe. Iran will become a nuclear state. I mean, what difference if it takes one year or five or ten? What difference?
We can stop them. By force if it comes to that.
But should this fail, all that would stand in the way of an Iranian first strike is an assured second-strike capability. Submarines armed with nuclear missiles. Mr. President, this is essential for Israel's survival.
Your argument boils down to asking the world to trust you.
As does America's.
It's telling that the physicists involved in the creation of these weapons became the most fervid opponents of their use. Einstein, Oppenheimer, Szilárd. Hans Bethe wrote, "If we fight a war and win it with H-Bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for, but the methods used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who brutally killed every last inhabitant of Persia."
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