Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a recent interview that peace will not be achievable in the Middle East until Iran ends its nuclear program.
Speaking to the Spectator, Kissinger, 99, had harsh words for the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, describing the agreement negotiated by the Obama administration as “inadequate,” and “dangerous” if re-entered into by the United States.
Kissinger commented about the stalled negotiations between the US and Iran on returning to the Iran Deal, after former President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the plan in 2018.
Kissinger always held doubts about the plan from the time it was signed.
“I thought Iran’s promises would be very difficult to verify, and that the talks really created a pattern in which the nuclear build-up might have been slowed down a little but made more inevitable,” he said.
He remarked that he worried an Iranian build up of nuclear weapons would inevitably lead to responses from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and especially Israel.
“Now, the trouble with the existing nuclear talks is that it is very dangerous to go back to an agreement that was inadequate to begin with – to modify it in a direction that makes it apparently more tolerable to the adversary,” he said.
“So, all the concerns I had with the original agreement, I’m going to have now. I haven’t seen the terms yet, but there is really no alternative to the elimination of an Iranian nuclear force.”
Kissinger added: “There is no way you can have peace in the Middle East with nuclear weapons in Iran, because before that happens, there is a high danger of pre-emption by Israel, because Israel cannot wait for deterrents. It can afford only one blow on itself. That is the inherent problem of the crisis.”
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)