Media Releases

On June 20, the following letter from AIJAC’s Dr Tzvi Fleischer was sent to both the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, responding to extreme and factually questionable claims made by Dr Amin Saikal in an article published in both papers that day, titled “Few believe Iran has nuclear weapons. We can’t afford to repeat the Iraq War lie.”

Both papers declined to publish AIJAC’s response – so here it is:

The rogue Iranian regime would no doubt agree with Amin Saikal’s narrative of the Iran-Israel conflict (Opinion, June 20), but it’s a false narrative. 

Israel has not been acting out of paranoia or bloodthirstiness – the Iranian regime has been constantly vowing to wipe Israel off the map since 1979, and has been arming and lining up its terror proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah to attack it from all sides, both before and after October 7. It then attacked Israel directly twice last year. 

Meanwhile, the IAEA just found that Iran was in breach of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations to provide transparency, and had enriched enough uranium for multiple nuclear weapons to 60%. This is far higher than needed for any civilian use, and only a very short step to weapons grade. 

Israel and the US also reportedly have intelligence Iran was actively building nuclear weapons components and planning how to mount them on missiles.

While any nuclear weapons Israel may have are purely for deterrence, and there’s never been any fear they might be used for aggression, there’s a widespread, legitimate fear Iran might use them. 

Israel had no choice but to act decisively against this existential threat. 

Dr Tzvi Fleischer
Director of Research and Policy
Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC)