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Former US president Jimmy Carter (file)
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| By Israel Insider staff September 20, 2007 |
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In a speech at Emory University, former US president Jimmy Carter dismissed the Iranian threat to Israel as "almost inconceivablel," the Jerusalem Post reported, despite recent boastings by the Islamic republic that it has 600 missiles aimed at Israel ready to be launched if attacked.
"Iran is quite distant from Israel," Carter, now 83, said, pooh-poohing the reports of hundreds of missiles targeting the Jewish State. "I think it would be almost inconceivable that Iran would commit suicide by launching one or two missiles of any kind against the nation of Israel."
Carter offered a few words about Iran's nuclear threat: "Obviously, we all hope we can do whatever we can to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power," he said.
His remarks come just days after the French foreign minister said that a nuclear Iran was the world's biggest threat.
The former president continued to rail on Israel and its relations with the Palestinians, echoing the newly added forward in his book, in which Carter criticizes the lack of "balanced debate" in the US about the Middle East. He warns officials against being "seen as knee-jerk supporters of every action and policy" of Israel's government.
Meanwhile, the deputy chairman of the board of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, Gideon Frank, warned delegates at the 51st International Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna Wednesday that Israel was concerned about its neighbors' nuclear efforts.
Frank said that the Jewish state would not be able to turn a blind eye to the efforts by various countries in the Middle East to develop weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, namely Iran and Syria, Haaretz reported.
In his address to Wednesday's meeting, Frank said, "lamentably, some instances of gross and consistent noncompliance, mostly in our region, have not been initially detected by the [International Atomic Energy] Agency and have not as yet been checked by proper enforcement of corrective measures."
He warned, "if left unchecked, these developments will undermine regional and global stability, while also posing a grave existential challenge to Israel. We can hardly remain oblivious to intensive efforts by some in our region to develop WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and their means of delivery, accompanied by sustained denial of the very legitimacy of our sovereign existence and calls for our destruction."
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