Officials in Israel Stress Readiness for a Lone Strike on Iran

With Chuck Hagel scheduled to begin his first visit to Israel as secretary of defense on Sunday, Israeli defense and military officials issued explicit warnings this week that Israel was prepared and had the capability to carry out a lone military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also spoke of dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat in an interview with the BBC broadcast on Thursday. Israel has “different vulnerabilities and different capabilities” from the United States, he said. “We have to make our own calculations, when we lose the capacity to defend ourselves by ourselves.”

Israeli officials have been expressing growing frustration with what they view as ineffective international efforts to halt what Israel and the West see as an Iranian quest for nuclear weapons. Despite economic sanctions and rounds of diplomatic talks, the officials say, the Iranian centrifuges continue to spin.

Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of strategic and intelligence affairs and international relations, said in an interview that Iran was abusing the diplomatic process to further its uranium enrichment program and that it was “high time” for the international community to issue Iran “a deadline or a timetable, or even a military threat.”

Iran, according to Mr. Steinitz, is about halfway to reaching the “red line” that Mr. Netanyahu drew on a cartoonlike diagram of a bomb before the United Nations last fall, representing the amount of medium-enriched uranium it would need to build a bomb. Iran has denied it intends to build a nuclear weapon and has said that it needs the enriched uranium for energy and medical uses.

The chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, on Thursday dismissed Israel’s threats as bluster that should not be taken seriously. Speaking on the sidelines of the Army Day parade in Tehran, he added that the United States would be deterred by Iran’s military might and not enter into war with it, according to the state-controlled Islamic Republic News Agency.

Though Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have continuously emphasized Israel’s right to defend itself by its own means, talk of possible action has been rare in recent months. Israel, during this time, has sought to lower tensions with the United States over Israel’s calls for red lines and in the face of vehement American opposition to an uncoordinated Israeli strike.

Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister until last month, quietly dropped his aggressive stance, focusing instead on the need to cooperate with Washington. President Shimon Peres spoke out openly against the idea of a lone Israeli strike, saying that the limited damage that Israel could inflict meant that it had to “proceed together with America.”

Secretary of State John Kerry sought to reassure the Israelis during a visit this month, pledging that the United States would stand with Israel against the Iranian threat “and as the president has said many times, he doesn’t bluff.”

Israel’s new defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, said in a speech for Independence Day on Tuesday that Israel should not lead the campaign against Iran, a role better left to the United States and the West. But he added that Israel could be the first target of a nuclear Iran, and that Israel “should prepare for the possibility that it will have to defend itself by its own means.”

Mr. Yaalon, a former military chief of staff who served in the last government as the minister of strategic affairs, is said by officials and experts to have been generally cautious on Iran. But Amos Yadlin, the former military intelligence chief who now directs the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, wrote of Mr. Yaalon in an article last month, “The defense minister is known to believe that an attack on Iran is less dangerous than an Iran with military nuclear capability.”

Israel’s current military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, said in an Independence Day interview with Ynet, a Hebrew news Web site, “We have the ability to cope with the danger that Iran poses to us, and permit me not to get dragged into the operational details.”

Asked by Israel Radio whether the Israeli military had the ability to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities alone if there was no other choice, General Gantz replied, “Unequivocally, yes.”

Prof. Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, said in an interview that the Israeli statements “echoed the mood of the country” in the same week that it marked Remembrance Day for its fallen soldiers and celebrated 65 years of independence. But he said the statements could also be seen as “signaling Israel’s displeasure with international efforts to block progress on the Iranian nuclear program” ahead of Mr. Hagel’s visit.

As for whether the statements were an indication of Israeli intentions or were meant to goad world leaders into more action, Professor Inbar said: “I don’t know. It could be both.”

Mr. Steinitz, the minister of strategic affairs, argued that it was easier to intercept a nuclear project at the enrichment phase than after a decision to actually to build a bomb. Assembling a bomb might take several more months, “but this can be done in a little room like this office,” he said. “It is very hard to detect and supervise. Once the Iranians have completed enrichment, they are actually on the verge of a bomb.”

“We have to learn a lesson from what happened with North Korea,” Mr. Steinitz added. “To think that fanatic regimes will be rational when they have nuclear weapons — such fanatic regimes cannot be trusted.”

He said Mr. Netanyahu’s red line translated into about 250 to 300 kilograms of uranium (or about 550 to 660 pounds) enriched to 20 percent.

“They abuse the diplomatic process to get closer,” he said of the Iranians. “Instead of giving up they take another step — sometimes a little step, sometimes a bigger one.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/world/middleeast/israeli-officials-stress-readiness-for-lone-strike-on-iran.html?_r=0