Dan Meridor: 'The danger comes from Iran'

AL Jazeera English Talk to Al Jazeera

We analyse the words and issues central to the dispute between Iran and Israel with Israel's deputy prime minister. Talk to Al Jazeera Last Modified: 15 Apr 2012 17:41

Dan Meridor: 'The danger comes from Iran' - Talk to Al Jazeera - Al Jazeera English

As the US and Europe confront Iran in talks about its nuclear programme, the diplomatic tensions between Iran and Israel remain at boiling point, with threats of an attack on the Islamic Republic by the Jewish state. And there is one expression that is continuously invoked by the Israeli leadership in order to justify its claims that Iran is an existential threat. In the words of Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister: "They are the leaders of Iran who called for a new Holocaust and who vowed to wipe Israel off the map." Al Jazeera's Teymoor Nabili talks to Dan Meridor, Israel's minister of intelligence and atomic energy and deputy prime minister, about this and questions him over Israeli politicians' claims that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, said Iran would 'wipe Israel out'. "They [Iranian leaders] all come basically ideologically, religiously with the statement that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive," Meridor says. "They didn't say 'we'll wipe it out', you are right, but 'it will not survive, it is a cancerous tumour, it should be removed'. They repeatedly said 'Israel is not legitimate, it should not exist'." On this episode of Talk to Al Jazeera we analyse the words and issues central to the dispute between Israel and Iran with Israel's deputy prime minister.