Israel asked the United States to bomb Iran when Barack Obama served as president, former Secretary of State John Kerry said during a conversation he held in London in Chatham House this week about the nuclear threat posed by Tehran. “Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu was urging President [Barack] Obama to bomb Iran,” Kerry said but did not clarify when that request was made. “Every leader I met
within the region … [including former Egyptian president Hosni] Mubarak, personally, to my face, said ‘you have to bomb Iran, that is the only thing they understand and that is the only way you will stop them having a nuclear weapon’,” Kerry recalled. But Kerry expressed his doubts over this widely-shared notion, saying that “Bombing Iran does not necessarily stop them from having a nuclear weapon. It is the same dilemma that we face with North Korea. We do not know where everything is.” MORE
