NY Times: Give Destruction Of Israel A Chance

New York, October 2 (AP) – Following Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s fiery address to the UN General Assembly, the New York Times issued a sternly worded editorial chastising the premier for closing the door on the annihilation of Israel as a diplomatic solution to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons capability.

Netanyahu had warned the UN delegates and world leaders not to be taken in by Iran’s recent charm offensive, arguing that nothing in Iran’s nuclear policy had changed despite a softer tone from the Islamic state’s leadership. “Facts are stubborn things,” he said, and pointed to Iran’s continued enrichment of uranium at levels consistent only with the development of atomic weapons, along with pursuit of technologies aimed at attaining missiles to deliver such a weapon. Iran’s leadership has continually spoken of a world without Israel, and the Jewish state sees its neighbor’s nuclear efforts as a threat, despite the fact that such a development would obviously solve all the world’s problems.

Nevertheless, the New York Times editorial argued, it would be unwise to dismiss Iran’s apparent recent efforts to find a non-military resolution to the Iran crisis, which has included crippling economic sanctions. “We must allow that [President Hassan] Rouhani’s overtures are sincere,” the editorial read, “and the destruction of Israel might represent only one non-military option to defuse the tension between Iran and the Western world.” It reprimanded Netanyahu for attempting to stand in the way of a rapprochement in US-Iran relations for the sake of petty concerns such as the welfare of Israel.

The editorial called on President Obama to work with Netanyahu to persuade the Israeli leader that emphasizing the military options against Iran would only prejudice events toward exactly that result. “The President should take advantage of the closer ties he has developed with Mr. Netanyahu during this second term in the White House, and explain to him the benefits of adopting an approach that would enable Iran to delay, evade, conceal, and continue its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction while pretending to cooperate with the West,” said the New York Times. “Even if that results in the complete extermination of Israel, the diplomatic path is the preferable one,” it concluded.