by Stephen Lendman

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon is a holdover from Netanyahu's previous extremist coalition regime.

He's part of Israel's lunatic fringe running things. He addressed a Shurat Hadin (Israel Law Center) conference in Jerusalem titled Toward a New Law of War.

The organization includes anti-Palestinian Israeli lawyers advocating judicial action worldwide to absolve Israeli war crimes.

It conducts irresponsible law suits. It maintains close ties to Israel's security establishment. It's a de facto Mossad proxy. "I can still look at myself in the mirror," Ya'alon said trying to justify the unjustifiable - naked Israeli aggression on Gaza last summer, including willfully targeting civilians.

Ya'alon suggested premeditated war is morally right. He vilified BDS as "another tool" used against Israel by its enemies.

He called international criticism of Israel "war after the war…We should fight them back," he stressed.

He rejected investigations of Israeli war crimes. He made a thinly veiled threat to attack Iran - referring to "cases in which we feel like we don't have the answer by surgical operations (so) we might take certain steps that we believe…should be taken in order to defend ourselves."

"Of course, we should be sure that we can look at the mirror after the decision, or the operation."

"Of course, we should be sure that it is a military necessity. We should consider cost and benefit, of course. But, at the end, we might take certain steps."

He said he was reminded of Harry Truman when "asked, (h)ow do you feel after deciding to launch the nuclear bombs, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, causing at the end the fatalities of 200,000, casualties?"

Truman claimed it was a moral decision - nuking Japan after rejecting its surrender offer so US generals could use their new weapon in real time and display America's might to Soviet Russia.

"We are not there yet," Ya'alon added. In other words, war on Iran isn't imminent - with nuclear or conventional weapons.

Tehran's UN envoy Gholam Ali Khoshrou sent letters to Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council saying Ya'alon's comment effectively admitted Israel's possession of nuclear weapons and willingness to use them.

"Moshe Ya'alon’s recent remarks and the Zionist official's implied reference to the possibility of using nuclear weapons against the Islamic Republic like what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki…shows more than ever the regime's aggressive nature," Khoshrou said.

"The impudent remarks have challenged the primary principles ruling the armed conflicts and the international humanitarian rights and weaken the international peace and security and therefore, the UNSC is expected to condemn these irresponsible remarks and clear threats of using nuclear bomb and massacre of civilians."

Israel maintains nuclear ambiguity. It doesn't officially admit to what's well known. It's nuclear armed and dangerous. It reveals nothing about its longstanding nuclearization publicly.

A February Pentagon released report dated April 1987 followed Institute for Research: Middle East Policy director Grant Smith's FOIA suit.

DOD's release is the first official US confirmation of Israel's longstanding nuclear weapons program - dating from the Ben-Gurion era.

Whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu's revelations cost him 18 years in prison - mostly in solitary confinement.

Israeli thermonuclear weapons today can destroy entire cities. Washington aided their development.

Israeli anti-Iranian saber-rattling is longstanding. Its only enemies are ones it invents. It claims the right to defend itself by whatever means it deems necessary.

Iranian Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi responded to Ya'alon's remarks, saying:

"The Zionists and the US are aware of the power of Iran and Hezbollah, and they know that over 80,000 (Iranian) missiles are ready to rain down on Tel Aviv and Haifa."

"Iran is a powerful country which will give a crushing response to them. We have displayed part of our military capabilities while we have kept many of our achievements and capabilities hidden to outsiders."

"Our response will be crushing not just to the Zionist regime, but to any other aggressor who intends to take action against us" - a reference to Washington and Saudi Arabia.

Longstanding US/Israeli plans call for regime change in Iran - by whatever means necessary. It remains to be seen if more regional war follows.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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