Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat told Britain’s Daily Telegraph in a Jan. 24 interview, that Iran has become a “legitimate target” for Israeli missile strikes for supporting armed movements opposing Israel. He stated, “Iran is a legitimate target for Israel. The head of the snake is Iran…. ‘And we should very clearly make sure the Iranians understand that they will not get away with using proxies against Israel and sleep good at night if we don’t sleep good at night.”
Barkat also promotes war with the Lebanese Hezbollah. He told the Telegraph that Israel could afford to keep fighting in Gaza and also open up a new front with Lebanon, despite Israeli military spending running $250 million a day. He added that Israel’s war in Gaza, which has been called genocidal, has not been fought “aggressively enough.”
In focusing his venom against Iran, and delusionally assuming Israel can fight a two-front war, Barkat depends on drawing the United States into his war. He is echoing some of the outlook of City of London weekly The Economist’s Jan. 21 article, “America and Iran Step Closer to the Brink of War,” which concluded, without evidence, that Iranian proxies may fire missiles at American forces. “If this continues, and one of these strikes actually ends up killing a significant number of Americans, the administration is going to have no choice but to strike at the IRGC,” Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The push to strike Iran would, as Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche has said, throw the situation in Southwest Asia “off the charts,” and could trigger a nuclear war.
Barkat went on to say in his interview that West Bank Palestinians will never be permitted to work in Israel again and instead, over 250,000 “foreign laborers” will be hired.
An Aug. 30, 2023 article for the New Arab news site, entitled, “Israel Ministers Want Million Settlers in Northern West Bank by 2050,” which cites coverage in Israel’s Ynet that Economy Minister Barkat as part of the “Samaria Regional Council” is seeking a plan for some 1 million Israeli settlers to illegally move into the northern West Bank (“Samaria”), and take over. On a smaller scale, IDF-backed Jewish settlers frequently make illegal land grabs on the West Bank and East Jerusalem in Palestine (“Judea and Samaria”), and displace the Palestinians.
