Sheldon Adelson’s Nuke Iran Call Sparks Anger in Spain
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Josh Nathan-Kazis October 25, 2013
Sheldon Adelson’s call for a nuclear strike on Iran is causing overseas business problems for the billionaire casino magnate.
In his daily radio op-ed on Spain’s Cadena Ser, Miguel Ángel Aguilar, the former editor of the worldwide Spanish-language wire service EFE, called on the Spanish government to reject a proposal by Adelson to build a casino near Madrid as a consequence of Adelson’s statement.
At a panel discussion hosted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach at Yeshiva University on October 23, Adelson suggested that the United States strike an unpopulated area of Iran with a nuclear missile as a negotiating tactic. “Then you say, ‘See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business,” Adelson said.
Adelson’s firm, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, has asked the Spanish government for tax incentives, among other legislative concessions, in return for the construction of a casino in the town of Alcorcón.
“Such an angel should not live among us,” Aguilar argued, citing Adelson’s bomb Iran proposal. “Basta ya (enough)!”
In an October 24 statement, an Adelson spokesman said that the nuclear strike idea had been “hyperbole.” Boteach, defending Adelson in the same statement, said that Adelson’s remark had been “innocuous.”
“Those who seem alarmed by Sheldon’s overstatement on the extent to which the United States should go to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon will at least protest that much more loudly against its actual development,” Boteach said.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
