Israeli ambassador teases ‘surprises’ dwarfing deadly beeper operation

Israel is “completely committed” to destroying Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, Jerusalem’s ambassador to the US told Merit TV.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. said in an interview Tuesday that Israel still has “some surprises” in store regarding its ongoing airborne war against Iran.

Speaking with Merit TV, Ambassador Yechiel Leiter said, “We are committed to completely demolishing the nuclear weapons infrastructure in Iran… to eliminate all the sites – and we have some surprises up our sleeves. There’s still a lot of things we can do.”

“When the dust settles, you will see some surprises on Thursday night and Friday that will make the beeper operation almost seem simple,” he added, referring to the September 17-18 simultaneous detonation of thousands of Hezbollah pagers and then walkie-talkies in Lebanon. It killed several terrorists and wounded almost 3,000 operatives in a surprise blow that utterly demoralized and substantially weakened the Iranian proxy.

When asked if Israel is “ready to come to the negotiating table” with Iran — in light of President Donald Trump’s confirmation that the mullahs have told intermediaries that they would like to talk again with the U.S. — Leiter replied that the problem with negotiating is that the Iranians have used this tactic “for 15 years at the same time they’re racing toward a nuclear bomb.”

“What we’re doing … is to prevent wars. This is a war to end wars…to engender peace in the Middle East,” Leiter said, while criticizing European leaders for trying to appease Iran just as they tried to do with Hitler, which instead led to “65 million deaths in World War II.”

President Trump is “the only one” who seems to understand the lesson to be drawn from this history and is “completely aligned” with Israel on the need to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons both now and in the future, the ambassador said.

Like Trump, “we want a deal,” Leiter said, “but the deal has to be complete dismantlement of the nuclear infrastructure and no possibility for uranium enrichment.”

In addition, “the Iranians have a plan to develop 300 ballistic missiles a month…. each missile is like a bus filled with TNT,” and Israel has already suffered 25 dead, more than 300 people injured, and “extensive damage” from the volleys fired by Iran over the last four days.

Israel refuses to live under the threat of thousands of such missiles launched at them simultaneously, so their elimination is a goal of the current Operation Rising Lion, and the dismantlement of the ballistic missile program as a whole must be part of any new deal with Iran, Leiter said.

When asked if Israel’s goal to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capability could be accomplished “without the help of the U.S. military,” Leiter hedged, replying that Israel’s only request from the U.S. until now has been defensive in nature.

He thanked “the [Trump] administration and the American people from the bottom of our hearts” for coming to Israel’s aid with the anti-missile THAAD and Aegis defense systems that have knocked many of Iran’s airborne threats out of the sky before they reached the Jewish state, “saving countless lives.”

As to actively attacking Iran as well, he said, “Allies, the United States, will make a decision as to whether or not they’re coming in and joining us. That’s an American decision.”