McCain and Obama campaigns focus on sanctions as Iran threat looms By Ron Kampeas. [excerpt] WASHINGTON (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, www.jta.org) 9/16/2008 -- The mounting anxiety over Iran’s nuclear program is sparking campaign chatter over a possible Israeli strike and prompting a bipartisan effort to revive long-stalled sanctions legislation in the U.S. Congress. ...

European Jewish Congress President: military action against Iran only under UN auspices by: Yossi Lempkowicz Updated: 15/Sep/2008 European Jewish Press

BRUSSELS (EJP)---The President of the European Jewish Congress (EJC) Moshe Kantor said that «if there is an obvious evidence that Iranians are going to have the nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it, somebody should stop them on behalf of the United Nations, even by military action.”

Kantor made the comment to journalists Monday in Brussels where he chaired a gathering of a dozen international experts on nuclear non-proliferation who discussed the danger of the Iranian nuclear program and the potential propagation of nuclear terrorism around the globe.

“If Israel or the US will be authorized to do a military action is not the question but rather that it (the Iranian nuclear program) should be stopped because it is a danger for the whole world,” Kantor said, stressing that Iran is not a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“If such military action is done legally, it is a very good protection for the European Jewry,” he added, insisting that everything “should be done legally”, and within the framework of the UN Security Council resolutions.

Kantor deplored the fact that around 10,000 companies in Europe are still collaborating with Iran on the development of its gas and oil industry. “A market with a turnover of about 100 billion dollars,” he stressed.

“The collaboration continues and even big EU countries cannot stop their business community from investing in Iran’s proliferation process,” Kantor, who is also president of the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe, said.

Iran is still blocking attempts to investigate allegations that Teheran carried out research and experiments linked to a nuclear weapons program, said a report released Monday by the UN nuclear agency.


At the gathering, a Russian expert, Vladimir Dvorkin, a retired general, reported about the different scenarios of an attack of Iran or from Iran.

He said that the disaster would be smaller if somebody attacks Iran first. “If we wait for Iran to have the nuclear weapon, it will be more problematic,” Dvorkin reportedly said.

The experts stressed that economic sanctions against Tehran “are not effective” because they do not hit the sensitive part of the Iranian society. “Any critic against the nuclear program is seen by the Iranians as a threat against the position of Iran in the world.”

There is a mobilization of the society around the current leadership, they said.

Monday’s roundtable discussion was also attended by experts from the US, UK, Norway, Israel, Belgium, Holland and the Czech Republic.