Ya'alon Talks

Excerpts from a transcript of a Question and Answer session with Former IDF Chief of Staff, Lt-Gen Moshe Ya’alon, courtesy of Atlas Shrugs

‘This conflict is part, from what I see, of the global war of jihad, led today, not by Al-Qaeda, led today by the Iranian regime, calling to impose the Shia Islam all over the Middle East, to dominate the Middle East, to lead the Arab world, the Islamic world, and of course the Iranian regime believes to impose Islam all over the world....

...This regime [Iran] is challenging the international order, the world order, by all means by generating, instigating terror everywhere in the Palestinian area, in Lebanon, using Hezbollah as a proxy, in Iraq, providing, equipping, and encouraging Shia elements to fight the US or the coalition troops in Iraq, and even providing it to Sunni elements, they provide explosive devices and so forth, and of course not to allow political stability in Iraq...

...Iran is going to get away again and again, for being a rogue country, for provoking this kind of attacks, for harboring terrorism, for financing terrorism, for creating terrorism. And this is the case with Syria. The Syrian regime should be punished after facilitating those attacks. It's very clear. Bashar al-Assad even (unintelligible), that he allows Khaled Mashaal to claim responsibility for the attack in the Gaza Strip, from Damascus, and from his last statements, it's very clear that he supported Hezbollah to provoke this attack, and he might get away with it...

...Without confronting Iran politically or economically, in the end we will have to confront Iran by military force, and it should be of course the last resort, but by avoiding the political or economic confrontation, I am sure that at the end we wouldn't be able to escape the military option. So this a challenge for the near future and we have to deal with it.