WATCH VIDEO: New Israeli FM Sa’ar warns: Iran ‘getting closer’ to The Bomb – ‘military operation’ possible ‘if necessary’
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL — Gideon Sa’ar has been the foreign minister of Israel for just one week.
And he’s already dealing with three global crises.
The first, he told me, is the very real threat that the Iranian regime is about to break out and build not just one nuclear weapon but an entire arsenal.
The second is that Israel is under vicious attack from so many world governments and mainstream media outlets who are lying about the Jewish state and trying to undermine Israel’s very right to act in self-defense against the Iranian regime and its terror proxy allies.
The third is that antisemitism is exploding across the world, as it did in the Netherlands last week when radical Islamist mobs attacked Israelis and other Jews attending a soccer match.
Just hours after being sworn in as foreign minister, Sa’ar headed to Amsterdam for emergency meetings to make sure that arrests were made, justice was done, and Israelis were safely evacuated from the country.
This afternoon, I spent an hour at the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
Part of that was meeting with Sa’ar’s advisors.
Part of that was conducting an exclusive sit-down interview with the new foreign minister.
Sa’ar told me this is the first interview that he has done with any American or Israeli news outlet since being appointed to the position last Tuesday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He also told me that he and Netanyahu – who have a long, complicated, and at times rocky relationship with each other – are now definitively on the same page when it comes to major threats facing the country, and major opportunities, and how to address them.
“We see eye to eye,” Sa’ar told me.
“The number one issue is Iran – and the number one issue on Iran is preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons. That’s the number one priority.”
“Is Israel going to have to attack Iran to neutralize that regime and destroy their nuclear weapons program?” I asked.
“The most important thing is that we should be decisive,” Sa’ar replied.
“Preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons – this is a commitment needed for the future of this country.”
“This was always Israel’s doctrine,” Sa’ar noted.
“We eliminated nuclear facilities in Syria and in Iraq in the past.”
“Now they are trying to reach for something that much more dangerous,” he told me, describing the Iranian regime as “maybe the most dangerous regime in all the world.”
“We must avoid allowing Iran to get nuclear weapons,” he said.
If the only way Israel can prevent that from happening is by launching “a military operation,” he added, then “we will do that, if it is necessary.”
“There is a red line that won’t be crossed, and that’s a huge challenge to us next year.”
Sa’ar said that there are ongoing “diplomatic efforts” to resolve a number of crises in the region, but “I don’t want to get into (that)” right now because things are very sensitive.
But Sa’ar made it clear that the Iranian regime is not far from The Bomb.
“They are getting closer – and there is a huge pressure today on the leadership of Iran to go this extra mile, to weaponize what they have achieved from the enrichment until now.”
“I think that today we see eye to eye with America – and with other important countries in the world – that it shouldn’t happen.”
In Part Two, I’ll share more from my conversation with Sa’ar, including his thoughts about the re-election of Donald J. Trump and his view of the national security and foreign policy appointments that Trump is making.
