Former Iranian Official Says Iran Won’t Hesitate to Use Nuclear Bombs Against Israel & Others

Former Iranian diplomat Mohammad Reza Heydari (screen shot from Channel 2)

Mohammad Reza Heydari worked as an Iranian diplomat until he defected and obtained asylum in Oslo, Norway in 2010.

He’s now publicly warning that if the hardline Islamist leaders of his former country obtain nuclear weapons capability, they won’t hesitate to use it to bomb Israel and others.

In an interview Friday night with Israel’s Channel 2 News, Heydari said (as translated by the Times of Israel), ”If Iran is given more time, it will acquire the knowledge necessary to build a nuclear bomb within a year.”

“If Iran gets to the point where it has an atomic bomb, it will certainly use it, against Israel or any other enemy country,” he said.

Heydari provided further insight into the status of Iran’s nuclear efforts, which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insists are peaceful in nature. He told the Israeli news program that Iran’s mullah regime is trying develop two to three bombs as an insurance policy for its long-term survival.

“They think that if they will have two or three [nuclear] bombs, that will grant them an insurance policy for Islam as a whole and for the Islamic regime in Iran as well,” he said.

In Heydari’s estimation, the Iranian leadership views a nuclear weapons capability as a deterrent to western meddling, as it believes North Korea has achieved. Its leaders also view the program within the context of their apocalyptic religious beliefs.

“They are busying themselves with ideological preparations for the arrival of the hidden Imam and are preparing the ground for that in a practical way. For this goal they are willing to spill much blood and to destroy many countries,” the former diplomat said.

Before joining the overseas diplomatic corps, Heydari worked for eight years as a Foreign Ministry representative at the Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran. While there, he was uniquely positioned to witness clandestine activities related to the nuclear program and Iran’s brisk business in exporting terrorism.

He saw the coming and going of Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon, and as a result he believes Hezbollah has ties with jihadi terror groups like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

From his perch, he said he learned the following details about the nuclear work:

• That South American civilian aircraft flew to Iran to unload nuclear weapons parts.
• That Venezuela purchased uranium – via mafia contacts - and sent it to Iran.
• That Iranian diplomats were urged to offer western nuclear scientists attractive salaries to lure them to work for Iran.
• That dozens of North Korean nuclear scientists have been aiding the Iranian program.
• That Iran uses diplomatic pouches to import nuclear weapons parts.

Heydari believes the only way to effectively stop the Iranian nuclear march is to “oust the regime.”

Because the Iranians might be motivated to hunt him down, Heydari presently lives in an undisclosed location under the protection of Norwegian authorities, according to Israel’s Channel 2.

At his weekly Sunday cabinet meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew parallels between the Holocaust and Iran’s stated intentions that it would like to destroy the Jewish state. Sunday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

"Anti-Semitism has not disappeared and – to our regret – neither has the desire to destroy a considerable part of the Jewish People and the State of Israel," Netanyahu said. "They exist and they are strong. Holocaust-denial is being spread by one of the world's major countries, not by a group or by individual countries or by marginal elements, but by Iran which, today, from the UN or any other platform, is the leader of Holocaust-denial while preparing for what they deem to be another Holocaust – the destruction of the state of the Jews. They are not halting their relentless and systematic race to achieve a nuclear weapons capability in order to realize this intention."

Netanyahu said that he would like to form as wide a coalition government as possible in order to prevent Iran from realizing its threats.

“This is our primary mission as a government and as a people," he said.

(H/T: Times of Israel)