U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee stated in a special interview at a Dec. 22 conference at the Institute for National Security Studies of Tel Aviv University that Iran “didn’t get the full message” when the United States bombed its nuclear sites on June 25. Iran, asserting its sovereignty, has refused to cease work on its civilian nuclear program or its ballistic missile program. With the background chatter growing about a possible confrontation with Iran, Huckabee’s statement implied an ultimatum to Iran: Stop reconstituting your programs or expect to be bombed.
“I don’t know that [Iran] ever took [U.S. President Donald Trump] seriously until the night that the B-2 bombers went to Fordo” nuclear facility, Huckabee said in the interview, reported the Times of Israel on Dec. 22.
Responding a question about Tehran’s reported efforts to rebuild the Fordo nuclear site, Huckabee told the interviewer: “I hope they got the message, but apparently they didn’t get the full message, because, as you mentioned, they appear to be trying to reconstitute and find a new way to dig the hole deeper and secure it more.”
Huckabee went further, in an unbalanced way, reported the Jerusalem Post:
“Israel is only the appetizer because [it is] closer and [it is] an easier target than the vast geographical expanse that represents the U.S.,” Huckabee noted. “But they have never hidden the fact that the real entrée—their ultimate goal—is to destroy the U.S.”
“If you want to destroy Western civilization, move the world back to the seventh century, and take us back to a place that, thank God, does not exist anymore, then you cannot do it without taking the U.S. down,” he concluded.
Huckabee is a religious fundamentalist, who refuses to call the West Bank by that proper name, but instead, refers to it as “Judea and Samaria.”
Huckabee declined to say whether U.S. President Donald Trump has made a decision to bomb Iran, but stated, “All I can do is point you to what [Trump] has said repeatedly, and he consistently has said Iran is never going to enrich uranium, and they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon.”
