Sheldon Adelson calls on US to nuke Iranian desert

Washington should then threaten to drop nuclear bomb on Tehran if it fails to comply with Western demands, powerful casino magnate says

24 October 2013

American Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson said the United States should detonate a nuclear bomb in the Iranian desert to display toughness, though without hurting a soul, before the next stage of negotiations with Tehran. It should then threaten that the next bomb would fall on Tehran, he said.

“What are we going to negotiate about?” Adelson told a crowd at New York’s Yeshiva University on Tuesday night.

As filmed by blogger Philip Weiss, a fierce critic of Israeli policy, Adelson said, “What I would say is, ‘Listen. You see that desert out there, I want to show you something.’ …You pick up your cellphone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say, ‘OK let it go.’ And so there’s an atomic weapon, goes over ballistic missiles, the middle of the desert, that doesn’t hurt a soul. Maybe a couple of rattlesnakes, and scorpions, or whatever. And then you say, ‘See? The next one is in the middle of Tehran.’ So, we mean business.”

Adelson made his comments at a forum on “Iran, Assimilation and the Threat to Israel and Jewish Survival” moderated by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the flamboyant Orthodox leader, nicknamed “America’s Rabbi,” who’s famous for promoting Judaism and Jewish values through mainstream American media.

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