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Defense Minister Ehud Barak: Maybe the US intelligence is wrong....
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| By Israel Insider staff December 4, 2007 |
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Israeli officials put on a brave face of continued determination, even as the prospect of potential US action against Iran's nuclear programs receded. The threat of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons must not be underestimated, was the message government officials sent out on Tuesday, despite the release of a US intelligence "estimate" claiming that Teheran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, although it continued to enrich uranium, potentially to a weapons-grade level, and was expected to be able to make a bomb within three to eight years.
Cherry-picking the supportive facts inside the Estimate, PM Ehud Olmert noted that the report emphasizes and strengthens the need for the international community to tighten sanctions on Iran so that it will not be able to produce nuclear weapons. He said that the report's findings had been brought to his attention during his meetings with Washington officials immediately after the Mideast conference in Annapolis, Maryland last week.
Grasping at straws, the Israeli official line was to note that even if Iran had halted its nuclear weapons plan, such a plan did indeed exist until 2003, and that the American administration had pledged to keep the pressure on. "The US still plans to continue to try to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons. We will make every effort - first and foremost with our friends in the US - to prevent the production of this type of weapon," he said.
But all of the words from official Jerusalem could not make the astonishment that the United States, which had led the global charge against an Iran seemingly hell-bent on nuclearization, appeared to be backing away from any willingness to take military action if Iranian resistance to international pressure continued.
As many local commentators and columnists noted, that left Israel out in the cold, isolated in its conviction that something must be done urgently to prevent an Iranian bomb.
Despite the report, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Iran is continuing in its efforts to produce a nuclear bomb. He said that although Iran had indeed stopped its program four years ago, it had since renewed it.
In response to Israeli speculation that the report's findings would weaken American-backed support for military action against Iran, Barak emphasized that the issue of its nuclear program remained relevant and pressing. "It is possible that this is correct, but I do not think that it is our place to make assessments about US [policy]. It is our responsibility to ensure that the correct things are done. Constantly speaking about the Iranian threat, as we have done recently, is not the right thing to do.... [W]ords do not stop missiles," Barak told Army Radio.
However, he said, "We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth, even if it is from our greatest friend."
"There are differences in the assessments of different organizations in the world about this, and only time will tell who is right," he added, suggesting that the US lacked certain intelligence: "We are talking about a specific track connected with their weapons building program, to which the American [intelligence] connection, and maybe that of others, was severed," he said. Barak said such reports were "made in an environment of high uncertainty."
Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said he "doesn't buy" the National Intelligence Estimate findings that Iran had stopped making a nuclear weapon.
National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said that regardless of the US intelligence report, "Israel must continue to act in every way against the Iranian nuclear threat."
Ben-Eliezer seemed to find the report amusing, saying he "didn't buy it": "This report is totally fine, it makes me smile, but on the other hand Israel and the defense establishment are working under the premise that Iran is in fact heading directly towards [a nuclear weapon]" he told Army Radio, adding, "This is exactly one of the issues over which the state of Israel must take no chances."
Government officials said Monday that the new report had not lessened Israeli concerns, due to the fact that enriched uranium can be used both for civilian and military purposes.
Beyond the bravado and hopeful attempts to rescue the situation, it was generally acknowledged that Israeli officials were stunned and mortified by the official about-face from Washington, which came just days after Annapolis. It had been generally believed that Olmert had been willing to make unprecedented concessions in Israel's traditional diplomatic stance in return for an American assurance that it would take care of the Iranian threat. Now those hopes seem dashed, and Israeli officials could barely contain their sense of betrayal, as if they had just discovered they were the victim of a diplomatic bait-and-switch -- the second in a row, it should be noted, after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice evidently tried to submit the Annapolis understanding to the UN Security Council without consulting Israel, only to have the Americans unceremoniously withdraw their ready resolution in the face of Israeli pique and, according to at least one report, a threat to break off the just-started process.
Bush also grasps for straws and keep momentum
President Bush also seemed at a loss to put the best spin on the National Intelligence Estimate. "They're still trying to learn how to enrich uranium," Bush said regarding Iran. "We know that enriching uranium is an important step for a country developing a weapon. We know they had a [weapons'] program," the president continued.
"This is a nation testing ballistic missiles, trying to enrich uranium; this is a country that had a covert nuclear weapons program, which they had failed to disclose until today."
Bush stressed that the report's conclusion, that Iran halted its weapons program, but not its general, civilian nuclear program, did not mean that the country would not again secretly develop nuclear technologies in a military direction. "To me, the NIE provides an opportunity for us to rally the international community -- to continue to rally the community - to pressure the Iranian regime to suspend its program," the president said. "What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program?"
The point of the report, he said, was that sanctions imposed so far seemed to have worked. Bush hinted that despite the report, the military option was not off the table: "the best diplomacy is one in which all options are on the table," adding: "Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon."
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