Shimon Peres claims from beyond the grave that he stopped Netanyahu from attacking Iran

peres
Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu stand before the flag-draped coffin of Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres claimed in a secret interview two years before his death that he intervened to stop Benjamin Netanyahu from launching airstrikes against Iran which could have triggered a wider Middle East war. 

Mr Peres, who died this week and was buried Friday at a funeral attended by dozens of world leaders, told the Jerusalem Post shortly after leaving the presidency in 2014 that he had worked to thwart Mr Netanyahu’s plans to target Iranian nuclear facilities. 

“I stopped Netanyahu from attacking Iran,” he said, when asked what he considered his greatest achievement as president.

“I don’t want to go into details, but I can tell you that he was ready to launch an attack and I stopped him. I told him the consequences would be catastrophic.”

When the newspaper asked if it could make his comments public, the nonagenarian smiled and replied: “When I’m dead.”

The claim from beyond the grave was published hours before Mr Netanyahu offered a fulsome tribute at Mr Peres’s funeral, praising a man who he once defeated in a 1996 election and rowed with when Mr Peres was president. 

Peres 
Shimon Peres said he was involved in stopping the attack on Iran  Credit: AFP PHOTO / JACK GUEZ

“It is no secret that Shimon and I were political rivals, but over time we became friends, close friends,” Mr Netanyahu said. Addressing the dead statesman directly, the prime minister said: “I loved you. We all love you. Be at peace, Shimon, dear friend, great leader.”

It is widely known that Mr Netanyahu favored striking Iran during President Barack Obama’s first term in office but his reasons for not going ahead with the attack are murkier.

Various former officials have claimed that the head of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, and the head of the armed forces both refused to prepare plans for an attack, believing it would end in disaster. 

Other sources have said that Mr Netanyahu’s cabinet colleagues balked at the idea and refused to support him or that pressure from the White House forced him to change course.

peres
Barack Obama stands by Shimon Peres's coffin Credit: ABIR SULTAN

But Ehud Barak, who was then defence minister, has hinted that Mr Peres played a part in scuppering the plans. “There was resistance to taking action in Iran within our defence establishment, within the government – in the President’s Residence,” he told an interviewer in 2015. 

Mr Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the claim. 

President Barack Obama used his eulogy speech to challenge Israel to continue Mr Peres’s work towards “the unfinished business of peace”. 

“This work is in the hands of Israel’s next generation - in the hands of Israel’s next generation and its friends. Like Joshua, we feel the weight of responsibility that Shimon seemed to wear so lightly. But we draw strength from his example,” Mr Obama said.

Attendees at the funeral including Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, who came under fire from many of his own people for going but said he wanted to honour Mr Peres’s “brave” work on peace talks.

Prince Charles sat with Mr Peres’s family wearing a yarmulke, the traditional Jewish skullcap, emblazoned with the three white feathers of the heraldic badge of the Prince of Wales. 

Successive British governments have barred the royals from traveling to Israel or the occupied West Bank because of the fraught politics, making exceptions only for funerals and visits to family graves.

Prince Charles last stepped foot in Jerusalem in 1995 for the funeral of the assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and high-profile British Jews have called for the royals to begin making regular trips to Israel. 

"The firmly held views of British Jews is that, having welcomed the visit of Prince Charles to Israel for two funerals, we now greatly wish that he would come for a happy occasion and a proper royal visit," said Jonathan Arkush, the President of the Board of Deputies.

Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, attended the funeral along with David Cameron and Tony Blair, who sat behind the row of current world leaders. All wore black yarmulkes of mourning.

License this content