President Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday explicitly warned that Israel would bomb the Islamic Republic of Iran if it continued to enrich uranium.
“Iran is taking a major risk by continuing the process of obtaining nuclear weapons, which is a certainty for us,” Mr Sarkozy said. “Whatever government is in power in Israel, we may wake up one morning and find that Israel has struck.
“Then the problem won’t be figuring out whether it’s legitimate, whether it’s a good idea. It will be a catastrophe and we must avoid this catastrophe.”
Mr Sarkozy made the remarks in a closed session at the “dialogue for stability” summit here. The comments were addressed to the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, the Emir of Qatar and prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
Journalists in an adjoining room in the presidential palace could not hear what Mr Sarkozy said, but his voice was inadvertently transmitted to a press centre in a Damascus hotel.
The brief summit was supposed to further progress towards direct negotiations between Syria and Israel, but it was dominated by the Iranian nuclear question.
An adviser to Mr Sarkozy said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) believes the Iranian enrichment facility at Natanz has produced “quantities sufficient for half a nuclear warhead”.
