Liberman: Barak Revealed State Secrets on Iran

Former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman on Sunday accused erstwhile defense minister Ehud Barak of exposing state secrets, after the latter detailed on tape three occasions between 2010 and 2012 when Israel was ostensibly poised to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Liberman told Army Radio that he was “more than surprised” at Barak, and said statements such as those given by the former minister would ultimately strengthen Iran.

“I think that when moves and discussions that should have been closely guarded state secrets are discussed by the press, it relays that you are a talker, that you aren’t serious, that you’re unreliable,” he said . . .

Channel 2, which broadcast the bombshell recordings of Barak on Friday night, said Saturday that “anger” at the former defense minister was widespread in the Israeli leadership, and that numerous senior political and security officials were also privately intimating that Barak’s version of events was not entirely accurate. The Prime Minister’s Office did not issue an official response to the broadcast.

In the tapes, whose broadcast Barak was said to have tried to prevent, he claims that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to attack Iran in 2010, but that then-IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi indicated that there was no viable plan for such an operation; that they were thwarted in 2011 by the opposition of fellow ministers Moshe Ya’alon and Yuval Steinitz; and that a planned 2012 strike was aborted because it happened to coincide with a joint Israel-US military exercise and Israel did not want to drag the US into the fray. (Read more from “Liberman: Barak Revealed State Secrets on Iran” HERE)

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