Former IDF commander: Iranian nuclear threat not imminent

Gabi Ashkenazi, the former Israeli military chief of staff, said that the threat to Israel from a nuclear Iran was not imminent.

Ashkenazi, who was chief of staff from 2007 until February 2011, was filmed saying at a recent lecture: “Anyone who thinks that there’ll be an Iranian nuclear weapon when we wake up tomorrow morning – well, we aren’t there yet.”

The footage, obtained by the Israeli newspaper Makor Rishon, was broadcast on Channel 2 News on Thursday. “This threat that emerges in the east, and all the darkening on that horizon – we aren’t there yet,” Ashkenazi was also filmed saying.

Israel should maintain a multi-pronged strategic approach — “a covert campaign” to thwart the Iranian nuclear drive; “diplomatic, political and economic sanctions; and a credible, realistic military threat,” he said. “We have to hope that this combination will keep Iran from going for the bomb.”

The comments marked Ashkenazi’s clearest expression to date of opposition to the imminent strike reportedly being contemplated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, has also advised against a strike. Amos Yadlin, a former head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, recently wrote in the Washongton Post that Israel had no choice but to prepare for a a possible strike on Iran.

Yisrael Hayom, another Israeli daily, reported that Shelly Yachimovich, chairperson of the Israeli Labor Party, met this week in Paris with French President Francois Hollande in Paris. She reportedly asked him to tighten the European Union’s sanctions on Iran.