Biden: Israel has right to attack Iran
July 5, 2009
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel has the right to attack Iran's nuclear program and the United States will not stand in her way, Joe Biden said.
"Israel can determine for itself — it's a sovereign nation — what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," the U.S. vice president told reporter George Stephanopoulos Sunday morning on ABC's "This Week."
Biden said Israel could decide to attack Iran whether the United States agrees or not.
"They're entitled to do that. Any sovereign nation is entitled to do that. But there is no pressure from any nation that's going to alter our behavior as to how to proceed," Biden said, adding: What we believe is in the national interest of the United States, which we, coincidentally, believe is also in the interest of Israel and the whole world."
Biden said he was "not going to speculate" on whether or not the United States would grant Israel over flight rights in Iraq to get to Iran, when pressed by Stephanopoulos.


http://jta.org/news/article/2009/07/05/1006321/biden-israel-has-right-to-attack-iran



Biden: Israel ‘Entitled’ to Attack Iran
US Won't Stand in the Way of a Military Strike
by Jason Ditz, July 05, 2009

In an interview today on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulus,” Vice President Joe Biden said it was up to the Israeli government to decide if Iran constituted an existential threat and that the nation was “entitled” to launch a military strike against the nation if they wanted to.

Biden said the United States would make no effort to dissuade the Israeli government from launching an attack on Iran, but was deliberately evasive on the question of whether the US would provide Israel with access to Iraqi airspace for the strike, saying he didn’t want to “speculate.”

Israel has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran over the past several years, and the right-wing coalition government elected earlier this year won largely on a platform of taking an even more hawkish position toward Iran than previous administraitons had.

At issue is Iran’s civilian nuclear program, which despite a lack of evidence Israel claims is being used to construct a nuclear weapon in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel is itself not a signatory of the NPT, and has a large, undeclared nuclear arsenal.

US defense officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have warned that a military attack on Iran, whether by the US or Israel, would be blamed on the US and would create a “disastrous backlash.”

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/07/05/biden-israel-entitled-to-attack-iran/