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Dan Meridor: Struggle With Iran Will 'Shape the Middle East'

Departing Likud Minister Dan Meridor tells Mazal Mualem about the squandered diplomatic opportunities with the Palestinians, and how the struggle with Iran will shape the Middle East.
U.S. President Barack Obama (R) speaks to Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor at a plenary session during the Nuclear Security Summit at the Convention and Exhibition Center (COEX) in Seoul March 27, 2012. The man at centre at an unidentified member of the U.S. delegation. REUTERS/Larry Downing (SOUTH KOREA  - Tags: POLITICS MILITARY)   - RTR2ZXN6
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Dan Meridor will leave his present position in several weeks and return to the status of the citizen observing from the sidelines. It will be a forced farewell for the minister of intelligence and atomic energy from the centers of decision-making and the most exclusive security forums, after years dedicated mostly to the struggle to halt the Iranian nuclear program. Meridor devoted many hundreds of hours to this issue over the last four years, but the fact is, it did not help him in the primaries; the members of the Likud Central Committee ranked him in an unrealistic place in their list, and sent him home. Meridor was punished by the party that turned to the extreme Right, which ejected him from their midst because of his political moderation and his struggle to retain the independence of the Supreme Court.

The only person who could give him a position in the government as external minister is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but Netanyahu has his own coalition trials and tribulations. Thus, even Meridor’s secret hopes to retain his place are dissipating.

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