IAF F-16
IAF F-16IDF Photo

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is totally correct that sanctions will not stop Iran’s drive for nuclear capability, and Israel would not have to advise the United States of any plans to attack Iran, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told Fox News.

“I think the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, is probably correct. Their intelligence on Iran is excellent. Sanctions tend not to work very well over a long period of time, and they do have the effect, tending to damage and hurt the people, as opposed to the governments,” said the former Cabinet officer in the Bush administration.

“I think any prime minister of Israel who gets up every morning and reads in the newspaper that the leadership of Iran says that the Israeli state should be annihilated, eradicated, incinerated, has to know that it's that prime minister's responsibility to see that that doesn't happen,” he added.

“If I were in the Israeli government, I don't think I would notify the United States government of any intent to do anything about Israel -- about Iran, I should say. I think that their relationship with the United States is such that it conceivably could leak out of the United States government that he called and that he plans to do something on Iran,” Rumsfeld said in an interview on the television network.

Rumsfeld agreed that Israel probably cannot knock out Iran’s nuclear sites, but he backed the theory that “all the Israelis need to do is delay them. They don't need to …. I think a delay is -- works to Israel's advantage. I have no idea what Israel's going to do."

The former Secretary of Defense also criticized the Obama administration concerning its attitude towards Syria.

"Syria and Iran are linked at the hip. They are terribly damaging to our country. They support Hamas. They support Hizbullah. They support other terrorist organizations. They are harmful to us in Iraq. They are harmful to us in Afghanistan. And they are harmful in the region.

“And to change that regime is vastly more important than what went on in Libya because of the damage that Syria and Iran together pose to the United States of America.

“I think that we should be providing that kind of covert assistance. And I think we should be trying to figure out who they are.”