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Federal Defence Minister Bill Blair said on Monday that he supports Israel’s right to do whatever it deems necessary to defend itself from Iran, even attacking its oil and gas infrastructure.
Blair said during a pre-cabinet media scrum that an Israeli strike on oil production facilities inside Iran would be an “appropriate” response to last week’s ballistic missile attack by Tehran against the Jewish state.
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“When we talk about (Israel’s) ability to defend (itself), certainly that would include missile launch sites, military installations, airfields from which these attacks are being launched,” the defence minister told reporters.
When a reporter asked whether that included attacking oil production facilities in Iran — something U.S. President Joe Biden has tried discouraging Israel from considering — Blair said he thought such an attack would be “appropriate.”
“Israel has a right to defend itself against such attacks and diminish Iran’s capabilities of attacking them,” he said.
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Blair’s remarks put him out of step with Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, who said last week that an escalation of the hostilities between Israel and Iran could plunge the Middle East into “all-out war.”
“We need this war to stop,” Joly told reporters shortly after Iran’s October 1 missile attack against Iran, in apparent retaliation for Israel’s campaign against Iran’s terrorist client Hezbollah, and the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
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In April, when Iran last bombarded Israel, Joly urged Israel to “take the win” and not retaliate. Iran’s airstrike in April was thwarted by Israeli missile defence systems with assistance from several other countries, including Jordan and Gulf Arab states.
In last week’s attack, a Palestinian living in the West Bank was reportedly killed.
Israel’s military is said to be planning a “serious and significant” response to the latest Iranian attack, fueling speculation that it could target the dense network of plants, refineries and pipelines clustered in the country’s west.
Iran is the world’s ninth largest oil producer and the fourth largest producer in the region. Although the U.S. has sanctioned Iranian oil, it still produces approximately five per cent of world output, selling on the grey market to China and an Israeli assault on Iran’s energy infrastructure could wreak havoc on global oil prices.
Biden cautioned Israel against striking Iranian oilfields on Friday, imploring Israeli officials to “think about other alternatives.”
Oil prices surged last week following the Iranian missile attack, with each of the two global benchmarks seeing their strongest gains of the year.
National Post
rmohamed@postmedia.com
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