Israel must stop Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, says former IDF officer

Sarit Zehavi was a lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces, and is also the founder and president of Alma, an independent research and education centre which focuses on Israel’s security challenges on its northern border.

Matt Frei: I just want to start off by asking you about that meeting between the Saudi and the Iranian foreign ministers. How significant is that, do you think?

Sarit Zehavi: I’m sorry, I listened to your previous report and I must begin with my personal experience living nine kilometres from the border. We don’t trade terror. We are fighting terror. My little girl was this week under attack of 30 rockets that were launched deliberately by Hezbollah into my home. I’m saying deliberately because Hezbollah stated that it launched these rockets to my home town and we had hits in homes over very, very close to where we live. So I think we should first put the moral code straight here. Who is the terrorist and who is fighting terror? Now, as for your question…

Matt Frei: Okay, answer the question then, go on.

Sarit Zehavi: Yeah, of course. I’m not surprised by this meeting. I think that the strategy of the Gulf countries, whether it’s Saudi Arabia or the UAE, is to play – and we say it in Hebrew, it works in English – all over the soccer field. Okay? With both teams. And that’s fine. This is how it’s working in the Middle East. They want to preserve open channels of communication with the Iranians, but at the same time – work with them, the Americans. And I think we understand that.

Matt Frei: Right. And when the defence minister here says that the targets will be – the strikes will be lethal, surprising, and that they won’t know what’s hit them, what do you think he has in mind?

Sarit Zehavi: I don’t know. I can tell you what I hope he has in mind.

Matt Frei: Well, tell me.

Sarit Zehavi: I think this is an opportunity that will serve not only the benefit of the security of Israel, but also the benefit of the global security, to target the nuclear weapons sites in Iran, because Iran is progressing towards a nuclear weapon. And if this will happen, it will change – completely – all the power playground between the different players globally. It’s very, very important to make sure that this is not happening. Negotiations until today failed to stop the progress of Iran to a nuclear weapon. And we have now a golden opportunity with our allies to fight that.

Matt Frei: But it’s also a golden opportunity to escalate into something far more dangerous engulfing the entire region, isn’t it?

Sarit Zehavi: We are already in a very dangerous situation, as you clearly saw from the findings of the IDF in south Lebanon. Iran was not preparing for peace. The proxies of Iran in the Middle East were not preparing for peace. So our conclusion from what happened just a year ago on October 7th is that we have to eliminate the devastating capabilities of the terrorist enemies that we are facing. Otherwise, they will use their capabilities against us. And when I’m saying us, I don’t necessarily mean just Israelis, because the ideology of the ayatollahs of Iran is an ideology that views the state of Israel as part of something bigger, as part of the west, as part of the western values. From their point of view, they are not just attacking the Jewish state. They are attacking the western representative in the Middle East, which is the state of Israel. And that’s why we should join forces together. We shouldn’t be afraid from a deterioration because we are already in a deterioration. What could get worse than October 7th?

Matt Frei: Okay. But there are a lot of people around the world, an increasing number, who feel that the way that Israel has behaved in Gaza and is behaving now is not sharing western values. It is quite the opposite. And you’ve become more isolated as a result.

Sarit Zehavi: Look, I want to say two things around it, and we should look at the details, which I think sometimes they are overlooked. Two things. First, the numbers that you mentioned in your report about how many Gazans were killed, and we’re going to face the same thing with Lebanon in a minute, is the numbers of the overall Gazans or the overall Lebanese. What – the terrorists are not getting killed in this conflict? It’s only civilians that are getting killed? There are no terrorists that are involved in the fighting that are getting killed? So we know that in Gaza, about half of the casualties are terrorists – and we don’t know the numbers yet.

Matt Frei: Actually we don’t know the precise numbers. What we do know is that there’s an enormous amount of destruction and a huge loss of life. And I’m afraid we really don’t have time right now to litigate those numbers once again. So let’s just leave it where it is now.