Israel must guard against potential nuclear ambitions by regional powers such as Turkey and Egypt, a senior defense official warned Sunday, as tensions over Iran’s nuclear program continue ahead of renewed U.S.-Iran talks in Geneva.
Yuval Steinitz, chairman of state-owned defense contractor Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, said Israel was preparing for the possibility negotiations with Tehran could collapse and lead to escalation, but stressed the broader regional risk.
“A country like ours has to worry about everything, and we must carefully watch other Middle Eastern countries, such as Turkey or Egypt, to ensure they are not secretly developing nuclear weapons,” he said in an interview with ynet.
Steinitz reiterated Israel’s long-standing position that a nuclear Iran would pose a greater danger than its existing missile arsenal. “I would rather live under the threat of 10,000 ballistic missiles than a single nuclear bomb,” he said.
He said Israel’s multilayered air defense system would respond to any attack and predicted that in a future conflict the United States could play a larger operational role, citing American air bases near Iran and aircraft carriers that could help target missile systems.
“There is no perfect readiness, but we are well prepared,” Steinitz said. “We have no choice. The more Iran is allowed to recover, the greater the threat to us. There is no scenario in which missiles are launched at us and we do not act to intercept them. This time it would likely be an American war, not just a single night of strikes on one or two sites.”
Steinitz also warned of additional threats, including drones, whose large-scale use surprised Israel early in the Gaza war but prompted rapid defensive adjustments.