Sen. John McCain says a nuclear-armed Iran could spark a domino effect among other Arab lands in the area seeking to attain weapons of mass destruction and create a “direct existential threat to the State of Israel.” The Arizona Republican also told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Wednesday Israel “may feel compelled to neutralize this threat.”
“The reaction would be that other countries in the region — including Saudis, Egyptians, and others — would also be on the path to acquisition of nuclear weapons,” McCain said. “It would be dramatically escalatory and would be a direct existential treat to the State of Israel.
“And the American people need to know more about what the Iranians have done: IEDs have killed Americans, supporting terrorists' organizations, nuclear weapons, playing in other countries in the region — they declared our withdrawal from Iraq is a great victory,” McCain said. “They are making trouble not only in that part of the world, but as you know, there was a plot . . . to assassinate the Saudi ambassador right here in Washington, D.C. They are great threat. And the American people need to be told how dangerous this threat is and the fact that the Israelis may feel — and I emphasize may feel — compelled to neutralize this threat to their existence.”
Hannity said the United States should take the lead in making sure Iran does not become a nuclear threat and noted the poor timing of the derogatory exchange about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and President Barack Obama at the recent economic summit. McCain agreed the comments were “indicative” of America’s deteriorating relations with the Jewish state.
“Well, I think the remarks exchanged between Sarkozy and the president are indicative of both of their attitude towards Israel — by any measurement, the United States policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian issue has been a total and abysmal failure,” McCain said. “One reason being that they insisted on settlement freezes, Sean, on the part of the Israelis and nothing on the part of the Palestinians to start with.
“Then, when the president backed off of that, the Palestinians had to demand it,” he said. “And also, it’s very important to recognize that . . . Netanyahu is the elected democratic leader of that country, the democracy — I happen to be a great admirer of his, by the way — and I think he's a very effective leader. And I think that he has not been treated with the respect that he deserves.”
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