
Etter at den tidligere israelske politikeren Shimon Peres var død fant daværende sjefredaktør i Jerusalem Post, Steve Linde, ut at det var på tide å avsløre det Peres hadde fortalt ham i hemmelighet i 2014.
If not for Shimon Peres’s intervention, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was planning to bomb Iran, the former president revealed confidentially to The Jerusalem Post over two years ago.
In a meeting at the Peres Center for Peace in Jaffa on August 24, 2014, Peres dropped the bombshell in a conversation with me and Jerusalem Post Managing Editor David Brinn.
I was editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post at the time and had established a close relationship with Peres, who had retired a month earlier as president.
During the course of the conversation (in which just the three of us sat and chatted over coffee), Brinn asked Peres what he considered the greatest achievement of his presidency. He responded by saying that he had personally intervened to stop Netanyahu from ordering a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear sites.
Presset fra Benjamin Netanyahu og forsvarsminister Ehud Barak for å angripe Iran pågikk mellom sommeren 2009 og sommeren 2011, Men ledelsen i IDF og altså også Shimon Peres tok avstand fra planene og hindret dem i å bli iverksatt. Skjønt det ennå ikke er klart akkurat hvordan det skjedde.
I 2015 skrev Jerusalem Post at Netanyahu helst ville at USA skulle gå til angrep på Iran, og han prøvde å fa det til. Alternativt var han altså klar for at Israel sjøl skulle gå til angrep – med de følgende det ville ha fått for hele regionen, og for verden for den del.