Sunday, June 14, 2009

Netanyahu speech to focus on Iran in wake of Ahmadinejad win

(Haaretz).Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to devote a more significant part of his greatly anticipated foreign policy speech to the Iranian threat, officials close to the premier said, in the wake of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's electoral win Saturday.

The officials added that this is a golden opportunity for Netanyahu to stress the issue before the world, after having called for years to stop Iranian nuclearization.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a senior coalition partner of Netanyahu's, told fellow Labor ministers on Sunday to lower their expectations ahead of the address.

"The speech will be very cautious, very vague, and [you] should lower expectations ahead of it," Barak said at a meeting.