Robert Wilkie, secretary for Veterans Affairs in the first Trump administration, told Newsmax on Friday night that Israel had to strike Iran now because the Islamic republic was close to creating a nuclear weapon.
“Most of the Israeli contacts I’ve had have told me that they believe that the ayatollahs were rushing and were within days, maybe weeks of being able to put a weapon on a missile,” Wilkie told host Rick Leventhal as part of Newsmax’s coverage of the Israel-Iran conflict. “And that’s why Israel moved.”
Wilkie said there was another reason Israel moved so fast, even while the U.S. was trying to reach an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program.
“Israel has been constrained — you’ve been on the ground, I’ve been on the ground there — from going after the Iranians because of the threat of Hezbollah to the north, the threat of Hamas in Gaza, and the presence of large numbers of Iranian troops under the protection of [former Syrian President Bashar Assad],” he said. “Well, those three things are gone now.
“And the other part of this is that the operational capabilities of the IDF [Isreal Defense Forces] when it comes to hitting fortified targets. If you saw what they did [to former Hezbollah commander Hassan] Nasrallah [in Beirut], they caved in a bunker that was 14 stories under the surface. So all of the things have come together.”
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