Israel is more likely to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities than the United States, Nicolas Sarkozy said.
The French president, who has been among the most outspoken world leaders on the need to curb Iranian nuclear technologies with bomb-making potential, said in an interview published Wednesday that he would be willing to help Tehran establish a purely peaceful atomic energy program.
“Everyone agrees that what the Iranians are doing has no civilian explanation,” Sarkozy told Le Nouvel Observateur magazine.
“The danger of a war exists,” he said. “The problem for us is not so much the risk that the Americans launch a military intervention but that the Israelis consider that their security is truly threatened.”
Sarkozy recently hosted both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu in Paris for talks on Iran and other Middle East issues.
