by Deng Yushan, Huang Heng
JERUSALEM, July 23 (Xinhua) -- The international community has to and is able to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, said Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon in an exclusive interview with Xinhua on Thursday.
Israel regards the Islamic Republic, whose leaders have repeatedly called for Israel's destruction, as its major security threat, and has joined the United States and some other Western countries in accusing Iran of secretly developing nuclear weapons under the guise of a civil program, a charge Iran firmly denies.
The world just cannot afford to have a nuclear Iran, said Ayalon, pointing to Iran's alleged close relations with the Palestinian Hamas movement and the Lebanese Hezbollah group, both of which are blacklisted by Israel and the United States as terrorist organizations.
Should Iran be nuclear, it would become a "regional hegemony" and "more aggressive," bringing more instability to a region that has already been under its shadow, added the senior Israeli diplomat, stressing that Iran has "a delivery system that can cover most of the world, so it is very very dangerous."
"Also, a nuclear Iran will start such an aggressive nuclear arms race in the world, not just here in many countries, but also in Asia and other places. So it's everybody's interest to stop Iran," said Ayalon.
Meanwhile, the international community is able to stop Iran's nuclear process, and this is "the most important thing," he said.
At the current stage, the Islamic republic has run into difficulties both in the political arena and in the economic field, he said, adding that if the international community could take concerted efforts to impose tougher sanctions upon Iran, then the Iranian government would be caught in a real dilemma, and would eventually be forced to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
In a notable contrast with the United States, Israel's most important ally, which spotlights diplomacy over the Iranian nuclear issue, Israel stresses that it will not rule out the possibility to take military actions against Iran's nuclear issues.
Touching upon this difference, Ayalon said he does not think the U.S. government has changed its strategic position that it will not tolerate a nuclear Iran.
"I've heard both U.S. Secretary of State (Hillary) Clinton and President (Barack) Obama saying that no options are ruled out and all the options are on the table. And I think this is the right approach," he said. "In our discussions with European allies and others, we have not heard any call to rule out any option."
As U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and special envoy George Mitchell are expected to visit Israel next week respectively over the Iran nuclear issue and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, speculations are circulating on local media that Israel might yield to a U.S. demand and temporarily freeze settlement activity in the West Bank in exchange for America's green light for a possible military strike at Iran's nuclear facilities.
In response, the deputy foreign minister dismissed the rumor as "baseless," stressing that the Israelis "make no linkage between the Palestinian problem and the Iranian threat."
Asked about when Israel will resume peace talks with the Palestinian side, Ayalon said his government wants to restart the talks as soon as possible.
The peace talks relaunched in late 2007 have been put on hold for about a year due to Israel's cabinet change, the recent warfare in the Gaza Strip and the internal Palestinian dispute mainly between Fatah and Hamas.
"Israel would like to resume the talks immediately... We have no conditions whatsoever, no preconditions to meet," he said. "Since the establishment of the new government, ... we are calling upon the Palestinians to come and sit with us and resume the dialogue."
However, "unfortunately, the response from the Palestinians was very negative so far," he said, placing the main blame on the Palestinian side. The delay, he said, is mainly because of their internal fight.
Among the core issues regarding the decades-old conflict, West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem are brought to the fore over the past few months.
The Obama administration has been leading the international community in urging Israel to freeze all construction both in the West Bank and the controversial east sect of Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967 while the Palestinians want it to be the capital of their future state.
However, the Jewish state has so far defied the mounting pressure, insisting that it has to allow the "natural growth" of the settlements and that it has every right to build anywhere across Jerusalem, which Israel claims as its undividable capital.
Commenting on rampant speculations that the disagreement on the settlements issue would endanger the Israeli-U.S. ties, Ayalon, a former Israeli ambassador in the United States, said the two "natural allies" will find a way out of the current situation.
"We do recognize that we have different views on settlements between Israel and the United States ... But the relationship, the interests (and) the friendship will overcome all these difficulties, and it will not pill over to other areas," he said, calling the United States Israel's best friend and ally.
On the Syrian front, he also expressed hopes that peace talks with the northern neighbor would resume soon and that Turkey, whose harsh criticism of Israel for the Gaza operation triggered controversy in Israel over its mediatorial role, would continue to facilitate the peace process.
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