U.S. may use a proxy to attack Iran- Mahathir

2/17/2005 7:30:00 PM GMT

The former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamed says that the United States might use Israel as a proxy to launch an attack against Iran targeting its nuclear facilities, the official Bernama news agency reported.

Dr. Mahathir said he believes that the U.S. would use Israel to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, similar to what happened in Iraq when Israel bombed it before Washington launches its full-scale war.

Commenting on recent developments regarding Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs, Dr. Mahathir told reporters that the "U.S. seems to want other people to fight for them".

He added that Washington would attack Iran because it thought that the latter doesn’t possess any weapon of mass destructions although such allegation were made against the Islamic Republic.

"They attacked Iraq because they know Iraq has no weapon of mass destruction," he told reporters here Wednesday.

On the other hand, the U.S. is unlikely to attack North Korea, although it recently declared that it has nuclear weapons, said Dr. Mahathir, a fierce critic of Israeli and U.S. foreign policies who retired in 2003.

"North Korea, the agenda is different. It is not just weapons of mass destruction, there is also this element of hatred against Muslim. There is a religious element in this thing. If it is non-Muslim, the U.S. will not attack," he said.

The former Malaysian Premier, moreover, said that the U.S. would be more cautious in handling North Korea’s nuclear issue, fearing retaliation from a country that has weapons of mass destructions.

Last month, the U.S. President said he wouldn’t not rule out using force against Iran it refused to give up its nuclear ambitions.

Mahathir had always charged that the U.S. foreign policy, under the cover of the so-called “war on terrorism”, has a strong anti-Muslim bias.