Former Mossad chief not against taking out Ahmadinejad
Meir Amit says West must unite against Iran, take out Ahmadinejad if all else fails: 'The world has vast resources and nothing is undoable'
Former Mossad Head Meir Amit said that he does not object to assassinating Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"I'm not against the world coming together and working to take out Ahmadinejad, even though such an action would make him a Shahid (martyr)," he told the Kfar Chabad weekly.
Amit, who was a head of the IDF Intelligence, deputy chief and cabinet minister under Menachem Begin, said that in the past he adamantly objected to the targeted killing of Arab leaders.
"Even Yasser Arafat we didn't kill, even though we had him in the 60's. As for the Iranian president… the West must unite to do away with him since he has almost sole control over the nuclear issue," he said.
"The world has vast resources and nothing is undoable. If you focus and decide to do something, eventually you get it done."
But before the world resorts to assassination, said Amit, it must first exhaust all other methods. "The Western world must come together and slap Iran with extreme sanctions. It must isolate it, isolate it financially as well and completely disengage itself from Iran. I see the Iranian issue on a completely different level, global instead of regional. I see Iran's growing strength as a global threat," he said.
The ex-Mossad chief said that at the moment Israel does not face an existential threat from Iran's nuclear program – "but only if we do something about it." According to Amit, Israel's nuclear plant in Dimona provides a deterrent against Ahmadinejad's intentions. "I think that this will be the reason they don't attack us," he said.
Amit said he believed that if the world does not stop Iran they will eventually decide to drop a nuclear bomb on "one country or another. But I am not concerned at the moment, if the Western world sits back and does nothing however, I will be very concerned."
Clash of civilizations
Amit's gloomy prediction for the future definitely includes a third world war and he believes it will be significantly different than the wars of yesteryear: "This time it will be between cultures and not between peoples. The Muslim world has reached vast parts of the globe."
Amit believes that not only is the Western world disunited at the moment, but there is also no leadership in existence which can lead the West, including the United States. "President Bush's situation is difficult, Iraq has spelled his end. He went into a hopeless war and lost the public's faith, so I wouldn't count on him at the moment," he said.
