JERUSALEM - Israel's prime minister sets off this week on a U.S. visit clouded by a deepening rift with Washington, which is pressing Israel to hold off on any attack against Iran's suspect nuclear program.
Although Israel says it hasn't decided
whether to strike, it has signaled readiness to do so -- a move that
would have deep worldwide implications.
Senior Israeli officials say Israel would
have to act by summer in order to be effective. U.S. officials, wary
that an Israeli strike could drive up oil prices and entangle the U.S.
in a new Mideast military confrontation during the presidential election
season, want to give diplomacy and sanctions more time to work.
These differences have created tension ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu's arrival at the White House next Monday. Aides to the Israeli leader would not say what he plans to tell President Obama.
"The meeting will be a good opportunity to
clarify both sides' stands on ... how to act against the Iranian nuclear
threat, which both sides agree is grave," Vice Premier Moshe Yaalon
told Israel Radio.
Israel's Haaretz and Israel Hayom newspapers
reported Wednesday that Netanyahu wants Obama to deliver an explicit
military threat to Iran in a joint statement to be issued after the meeting.
Differing assessments of urgency underlie the disagreements on Iran.
Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be a
threat to the existence of the Jewish state. It cites Iranian leaders'
repeated calls for Israel's destruction, support for anti-Israel
militant groups and its arsenal of ballistic missiles that are already
capable of striking Israel. It also fears a nuclear Iran would touch off
an atomic weapons race in a region hostile to Israel's existence.
Israel itself is thought to have a significant arsenal of nuclear weapons, though it does not admit that as a matter of policy.
Israel takes little comfort in the U.S. assessment, reiterated Tuesday by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that Tehran has not decided whether to build a nuclear bomb. Iran denies it is making nuclear weapons.
Israeli officials note that the U.N. nuclear
agency said recently that Tehran is rapidly moving ahead with a key
elements associated with bomb making, and Iran is moving its nuclear
operations deeper underground. They believe these developments are
strong signs of Iranian intentions.
Experts say work on a bomb could begin
within a year, if not earlier, but Israeli officials who favor a strike
do not want Iran to reach that point. Defense Minister Ehud Barak
recently fueled speculation about an Israeli strike by warning the
window of opportunity was closing.
Israeli officials have told the U.S. it will
not give any warning of an impending attack -- a development confirmed
by a U.S. intelligence official this week.
Gen. Martin Dempsey,
chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress this week he
has not counseled Israel against attacking Iran. Instead, he said,
"we've had a conversation with them about time" and added he would
"absolutely not" take military force against Iran off the table.
Dempsey, U.S. national security adviser Tom Donilon and director of national intelligence James Clapper have all been sent by Obama recently to pressure Israel to hold off.
The U.S. and Europe have approved tough
sanctions on Iran's central bank and its key oil sector that are to go
into effect this summer. They believe these measures must be given time
to work.
Israel has welcomed the sanctions, but it is
skeptical they will persuade Iran to back down. Israeli officials
believe that by the time the toughest sanctions go into effect this
summer, it may be too late to strike.
U.S. officials and others think an Israeli attack could set back the Iranian program a few years at most.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
has expressed reservations about the effectiveness of an attack on
Iran's heavily fortified nuclear facilities and Dempsey has publicly
questioned whether it would be worth risking the cascade of consequences
liable to follow.
The Iranian nuclear threat is a world
problem and not Israel's alone, said Danny Yatom, a former head of
Israel's Mossad spy agency. Even a temporary setback to the nuclear
program would be useful, Yatom said, because it would buy the world time
to try to knock it out entirely.
Iran has warned it would pummel Israel with missiles if attacked, and it could also recruit its allies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, to attack Israel with rockets and missiles from closer range.
Tehran could also block the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit route for the world's oil tankers, or strike Gulf targets such as Bahrain,
home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. Either move could send global oil
prices skyrocketing and draw the U.S. military into the conflict.
The disagreements over Iran have stoked the
tensions that have characterized relations between the Obama and
Netanyahu governments, primarily over frozen Israeli-Palestinian
peacemaking, which pointedly seems to be a non-issue in the upcoming
visit.
