Iran cannot be permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon and the United States must be prepared to do “whatever it takes” to stop them, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich declares in an exclusive Newsmax.TV interview.
President Obama on Sunday gave a pro-Israeli address at the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), acknowledging that Israel has the right to defend itself against an attack from Iran. But Gingrich remains critical of the administration’s policies toward Israel.
“The president sounds better than he has at any time before but I don’t see any action,” he declares.
“The Iranians have announced that they have accelerated their development of nuclear materials. Nothing has been done. They kicked out the inspectors.
Nothing has been done. They’ve announced they have new centrifuges that are more efficient. Nothing has been done. So the question, is besides saying a few words at a political meeting in order to try to get votes, what is the president prepared to do?"
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“I was glad to hear he admitted that an Israeli prime minister did have the right to defend his country and that after the Holocaust an Israeli prime minister has a moral obligation to intervene to pre-emptively stop the potential of a second Holocaust. But I have no idea what he’s saying in private to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, and I get a sense that there is very great tension between the American and Israeli governments.
“You saw a couple of months ago the secretary of Defense attacking Israel and demanding that Israel come back to the table to negotiate at a time when there had been 11 missiles fired into Israel from Gaza in one month. So I think the administration tends to be one-sidedly critical of Israel — except once a year when AIPAC holds its conference, at which point the president is very pro-Israel for up to 96 hours.”
Asked what he plans to say when he addresses AIPAC this week, Gingrich responds: “I’m going to say that Iran cannot be permitted to have a nuclear weapon, period, and the United States has to be prepared to do whatever it takes to stop them.
“I’m also going to say that if an Israeli prime minister decided the survival of his country was at stake, I would respect that decision.
“And I’m going to say that an American energy policy designed to make us independent of the Middle East and to enable us to exercise our influence in the region without any worry about what they might do with the oil supply is an essential national strategy for us.”
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