WarSclerotic

Gingrich Warns of Iranian Nuclear Attack – NYTimes.com.

Michael McElroy for The New York TimesNewt Gingrich and his wife, Callista, with workers at the Jergens plant in Cleveland on Tuesday.

3:07 p.m. | Updated CLEVELAND — Newt Gingrich asserted on Wednesday that an Iranian nuclear attack on the United States was “a real danger” and that it could kill and wound hundreds of thousands of Americans.

His comments were the latest in a string of hawkish and even apocalyptic statements that some Republican presidential candidates, particularly Mr. Gingrich, have been using to discuss Iran.

But his remarks Wednesday at an appearance here may have been intended to carve out new space on the issue against Rick Santorum, who now appears much more of a threat to Mr. Gingrich after Mr. Santorum’s surprisingly wide victories in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri on Tuesday night.

Mr. Santorum has made warning about the threat of the Iranian nuclear program a signature issue, and he is betting his campaign on a strong showing in many of the same “Super Tuesday” states, like Ohio, that Mr. Gingrich must perform well in to remain viable.

A report in November by United Nations weapons inspectors said thatcredible evidence showed that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device.” But the report did not say that Iran was trying to construct an actual nuclear bomb, and Iran has denied that it wants to do so.

The report also described what appeared to be concentrated effort by Tehran to explore how to make a nuclear weapon before 2003, but suggested that the effort may have become less directed and more scattered in later years.

In the past, Mr. Gingrich has said that if Iran were to obtain nuclear weapons, then not only Israel but also the United States would be at risk, and he has characterized Iran as a country and a culture that fosters terrorism. He has also talked about how much worse a nuclear attack on the United States would be than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington.

He tied those warnings particularly close together in his appearance here.

“You think about an Iranian nuclear weapon. You think about the dangers, to Cleveland, or to Columbus, or to Cincinnati, or to New York,” Mr. Gingrich said. “Remember what it felt like on 9/11 when 3,100 Americans were killed. Now imagine an attack where you add two zeros. And it’s 300,000 dead. Maybe a half-million wounded. This is a real danger. This is not science fiction. That’s why I think it’s very important that we have the strongest possible national security.”

There is no evidence that Iran has developed a warhead that could fit atop one of its missiles, and those missiles do not have the range to reach the United States. (Much of Europe is also out of range.) While there are other ways to deliver a nuclear weapon — by ship container, or aboard an airplane for example — none are easy, and Mr. Gingrich did not explain how he thought Iran might carry out such an attack.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington..

Where are we headed with Iran sanctions? – Right Turn – The Washington Post.

Iran’s Nuclear Clock Is Ticking.

Judith Miller reports: The clock on Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon is ticking. But America’s and Israel’s clocks show different times.

The one looming over Israel’s premier national security conference at Herzliya last week stood at close to midnight. This is defined by the Israeli government as Tehran’s acquisition of a nuclear “capability” — the key ingredient being enough highly enriched uranium to fuel a bomb.

Washington’s clock is ticking more slowly, attuned to the coming election in November, Israelis say. An Israeli strike against Iran risks destabilizing oil markets and sending gas prices skyrocketing, which could be catastrophic for President Obama’s re-election prospects. And midnight in America is not Iran’s acquisition of “capability,” but its fabrication and assembly of an actual weapon.

“Our red lines and timelines are different,” said Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence. And these competing “red lines” — points at which military action must be taken to prevent Iran from building a bomb — have been a source of growing angst to Israelis.

But to understand what Israelis and Americans are saying, you must consider their multiple audiences. Washington and Jerusalem are signaling each other. They are signaling as well their North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies, and their diplomatic opponents Russia and China, who have done all they can to delay crippling sanctions in the United Nations Security Council. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s warning that Israel may strike between April and June was, most likely, less an expression of alarm about Israel’s threats than an effort to pressure NATO allies to support crippling sanctions against Iran now.

But the ultimate recipient of such declarations and hints is, of course, Iran’s not-so-supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Diplomatic chatter about a possible military strike against Iran’s nuclear capabilities may well be a bluff intended to prompt Tehran to make diplomatic concessions and suspend its nuclear program, particularly its Furdo enrichment facility near Qom. (Almost no one believes Iran’s claims that this facility is intended to produce medical isotopes.) The threat of targeting Iran’s much-despised Iranian Republican Guard Corp installations adds weight to such chatter.

Amid all this diplomatic murk, however, one thing seems clear. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the handful of top officials who would be making this call have probably not yet decided on a military strike, as President Obama has suggested.

True, Israeli officials have been weighing the costs and benefits of military action against Iran. But Israel is frustrated, I was told, that Washington hasn’t given its ally a firm commitment of support for military action if sanctions, cyber-viruses and assassinations fail to substantially degrade the program or convince Khamenei to suspend his weapons quest.

Israeli officials have been quietly pressing for such a commitment in exchange for deferring unilateral Israeli military action, intelligence officials say. Yet given the two nations’ differing timelines and red lines, Israel may well conclude that it must strike before the White House would like it to. It may, in fact, do this despite Washington’s assertion that Israel lacks the ability to inflict the damage of an American or joint attack. “We are capable of doing what we need to do,” a senior intelligence official told me last week.

Another intelligence official reminded me that Israel got similarly dire warnings about the cost of military action prior to “Operation Opera,” its devastating strike against Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981. “We were told the strike would delay the Iraqi nuclear program for only a year or two and engender the world’s fury,” the official said. “But as we learned in 2003, Iraq never rebuilt either that reactor or a serious nuclear capability.”

Strikingly absent from the Herzliya conference were efforts to assess the effectiveness of the covert war that Israel is believed to be waging on Iran’s nuclear program. This is thought to include the “Stuxnet” worm that slowed enrichment centrifuges at Natanz in 2010, the mysterious explosions at Iranian missile bases and the assassination of at least five Iranian nuclear scientists.

While Washington has denied responsibility for such hostile actions, Israel has maintained a diplomatic silence.

Equally significant was the lack of discussion of the likely consequences of such military action: potential rocket and missile strikes against Israeli civilians by Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah in the north and from militant Sunni Gaza in the south.

There was also little open discussion of whether a military strike would shatter years of deliberate, patient work to unite Europe and other allies around tough economic sanctions. Or whether a strike would prompt Iran to throw out the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, whose visits have provided so much information about Iran’s program.

Nor was there much focus on whether a military strike would give a largely discredited, illegitimate regime (in the eyes of many Iranians) the gift of a renewed Iranian patriotism.

Indeed, disdain for what Israelis perceive as Obama’s re-election mania and his ostensible strategy of “leading from behind” — which has no translation in Hebrew — was widespread.

Perhaps its greatest focus was the mixed signals sent from Washington about President Obama’s declaration that an Iranian nuclear bomb was “unacceptable.” If that were so, the reasoning runs, why did Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reportedly tell Netanyahu that the U.S. would not participate in a war against Iran initiated by Israel without Washington’s prior agreement?

Why is the European Union waiting until summer to impose its boycott of Iranian oil and the toughest of the sanctions? Why — perhaps most importantly — did Dempsey state that Iran could be “deterred” from using a nuclear bomb?

Israelis interpreted this formulation as his acquiescence to Iran’s inevitable possession of a nuke. Furthermore, Shmuel Bar, director of studies at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, argues that nothing in Iranian history suggests that Tehran views deterrence as, say, the former Soviet Union did. “To bet on Cold War-like deterrence involves huge risk,” he concluded.

There is, as well, nothing in Israeli history to suggest a willingness to incur such nuclear risk. Israel has always acted aggressively to prevent enemies in the region from building or obtaining atomic bombs. Though taking military action would be far more difficult against Iran’s facilities than against Iraq’s, it is unlikely that Israel will risk endless waiting to stop the Iranians from getting a bomb.

As Israeli Defense Secretary Ehud Barak warned, Israel must always worry that “later may be too late.”

By Jeffrey Goldberg, Bloomberg

In Print: Thursday, February 9, 2012

via Caught between lessons of history, caution of ally – Tampa Bay Times.

On Sept. 4, 2003, three Israeli air force F-15s flew low over the gates of the former death camp at Auschwitz. On the ground — on the train tracks, in fact, leading to the gas chambers — a delegation of Israeli military officers stood at attention.

They listened as the lead pilot, then-Brig. Gen. Amir Eshel, broadcast a statement from his cockpit: “We pilots of the air force, flying in the skies above the camp of horrors, arose from the ashes of the millions of victims and shoulder their silent cries, salute their courage and promise to be the shield of the Jewish people and its nation, Israel.”

Officers who attended the ceremony told me they dreamed, at that moment, of somehow devising a way to send those planes back in time, to bomb the tracks on which they stood while the cattle cars were still rolling.

The Israeli air force, of course, had permission from the Polish authorities to fly this extraordinary mission. But what wasn’t known at the time was that the Poles and the Israelis disagreed about the flight path. The Poles wanted the Israelis to stay high in the air, above the clouds. Eshel, however, disobeyed the Polish directive, and flew low, so the Israelis on the ground could see him. In a story that has since become famous among Israeli air force officers, Eshel told his fellow pilots, “We had to listen to the Poles for 800 years. Today we don’t have to listen anymore.”

A photograph of the Auschwitz flyover hangs today in offices across the Israeli defense establishment. In the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, the photos I saw were signed by Gen. Eliezer Shkedi, who was the air force commander at the time. The inscription on these photos read, “To remember. To never forget. To rely on no one but ourselves.”

This past weekend, Eshel was appointed commander of the Israeli air force. It will fall to him to plan and execute the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, should Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu order him to do so. Senior U.S. officials think that Netanyahu is preparing to launch such an attack in the coming months.

Netanyahu has never kept hidden his feelings about Iran. This is what he told me three years ago: “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying.”

Iran represents the definitive, post-Nazi Jewish nightmare: a regime that openly argues for the destruction of Israel and is seeking nuclear weapons. Zionism — actual Zionism, not the malicious fever-dream version of Zionism advanced by the clerics in Tehran — demanded that the world grant national equality to the Jewish people. It also made a demand of Jews themselves: Count on no one, because no one will come to your aid in your most dire moment. Over Auschwitz, Eshel took symbolic revenge on the Poles who humiliated the Jews in the centuries leading up to the Holocaust. His then-commander saw in Auschwitz perfect proof that the Zionist emphasis on self-reliance was correct.

Yet Israel hasn’t attacked Iran. Why? American officials think the only reason is the active discouragement of the Obama administration. The message from Barack Obama to Netanyahu is clear: We’ve got this. We won’t let Iran go nuclear, so please don’t do anything yourselves. And if you attack, you may wind up hurting us.

No Israeli prime minister has faced quite so difficult a dilemma as the one Netanyahu faces now. To his east, Iran, an anti-Semitic regime that seeks nuclear weapons and calls for Israel’s elimination. To his west, the United States, a country that is Israel’s prime benefactor in a hostile world. Netanyahu understands that a nuclear Iran could mean permanent insecurity for his people, and eventual war. But he understands, too, that his small nation would be adrift and friendless if it alienated the United States.

The self-reliant Zionist in him believes that it is his duty, and his duty alone, to prevent a second Holocaust. But the realist in him knows exactly where the F-15s that flew over Auschwitz were made.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for the Atlantic, is a Bloomberg View columnist.

Washington Watch: Banging the war… JPost – Opinion – Columnists.

By REUTERS/Larry Downing The Obama administration has taken some unusual steps to discourage an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in the coming months. After diplomatic, intelligence and military leaders failed to get the message across in private, they went public.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, through columnist David Ignatius, said his biggest worry is the strong likelihood of an Israeli attack before summer.

Panetta and President Barack Obama have cautioned that Israeli military action would “derail an increasingly successful economic sanctions program,” Ignatius wrote. In his view the administration was “signaling” Jerusalem that if it decides to go ahead, “Israel is acting on its own.”

On Super Bowl Sunday the president took a different tone but delivered a similar call for restraint. “I don’t think that Israel has made a decision on what they need to do,” he told NBC’s Matt Lauer. “I will say that we have closer military and intelligence consultation between our two countries than we’ve ever had. We are going to be sure that we work in lockstep as we proceed to try to solve this – hopefully diplomatically.”

Obama may have been talking to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu when he said, “Any kind of additional military activity inside the Gulf is disruptive and has a big effect on us. It could have a big effect on oil prices, we’ve still got troops in Afghanistan, which borders Iran, and so our preferred solution here is diplomatic.”

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went to Israel last month and reportedly told his counterparts that the United States would not participate in an Israeli-initiated war against Iran without prior agreement and advance notice. In other words, don’t start a war and then expect us to follow you in. He returned convinced the Israelis wouldn’t agree but were confident their American supporters would force Obama to fall in line since this is an election year, reported Gareth Porter of the Inter Press Service.

For the most part, the discussion of a possible Israeli strike has focused on the strategic aspects, particularly the time when Iran is expected to reach what Defense Minister Ehud Barak has called the “immunity zone” – securing key nuclear assets deep underground and beyond Israeli or American reach. But the political element may be equally determinative, as Gen. Dempsey indicated.

Netanyahu, who has a penchant for dabbling in American politics, will be in Washington next month to speak to the AIPAC policy conference. Look for him to whip up the activists long schooled in lobbying for a get-tougher Iran policy.

They’ll take the message to Capitol Hill with enthusiasm.

If past performance is any indicator, Obama will tell the Israeli leader that sanctions are showing results and, along with diplomacy, should be given more time to work. Netanyahu will respond that the Iranians are not serious about diplomacy and use it only to stall while they go full speed ahead on their nuclear program. Obama will repeat assurances of “ironclad” US support, and Netanyahu will dodge the president’s plea for patience and his request for advance notice.

It is no secret that senior American officials across the board distrust Netanyahu, believing he does not level with them, does not keep his commitments and is manipulative. Israeli analysts suggest Netanyahu could decide to hit Iran during this election year, believing Obama would be reluctant to try block him for fear of offending Jewish supporters. The window of political opportunity is wide open, in Netanyahu’s view.

Republicans are trying to make support for Israel a wedge issue and are accusing Obama of being hostile to the Jewish state. They say his willingness to negotiate with the Iranians is a sign of weakness. The president has been in make-nice-to-Israel mode, effectively shelving any effort to revive peace negotiations, which pleases Netanyahu. The president’s assumption is that peace process progress is impossible so why ruffle any feathers among Israel’s friends. Netanyahu has argued there can be no progress in peace talks until the Iran problem is resolved.

If Netanyahu does decide to strike Iran this year, with or without US administration backing, Republicans could be expected to turn that into a campaign issue against the Democrats.

Obama can expect to be accused of forcing Israel to attack by failing to stop the Iranian nuclear program, and blamed for any Iranian retaliation. War in the Gulf, even a brief one, will certainly cause a major disruption in oil supplies and a spike in fuel prices, and if Iran carries through on its threats to close the Straits of Hormuz, it could damage an already fragile global economy.

America is vulnerable to Iranian retaliation because it has extensive assets in the region, including ships, bases, tens of thousands of troops and civilians and many American businesses. Retaliation against them would trigger a major American military response, sparking a wider war this country cannot afford.

The American public does not want another war in the Middle East, and President Obama will be blamed if one erupts, whether triggered by an Israeli attack or Iranian retaliation.

Republicans may criticize the president for cautioning against another conflict, but Jewish voters, who traditionally support Democrats 3:1, are not likely to shift to the GOP because it bangs the war drums loudly and wants to follow Netanyahu into battle with Iran.

Israeli President Peres sends message of peace to Iranians.

Wednesday, 08 February 2012

“We were not born enemies and there is no need for us to live as enemies,” President Shimon Peres said in a speech to in Israel’s parliament. (File photo)

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President Shimon Peres sent a message of peace to Iranians from the podium of Israel’s parliament on Wednesday, saying there was no need for the two peoples to be foes.

“We were not born enemies and there is no need for us to live as enemies,” Peres said in a speech marking the 63rd anniversary of the Knesset’s founding.

“Do not allow the flags of hostility to cast a dark shadow on your historic heritage,” he said. “Your people are a sensitive people who aspire for friendship and peace, and not for conflict and wars.”

In a televised address on Friday, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described Israel as “a cancerous tumor that must be cut out, and God willing it will be.”
 

“From now on we will support any group that will fight the Zionist regime,” said the all-powerful Iranian leader.

Speculation has risen in recent weeks, driven in part by comments made by officials in the Jewish state, about the possibility of an Israeli military strike on Iran.

Israel and much of the international community believe that Iran’s nuclear program masks a covert weapons drive, a charge Tehran denies.

Widely believed to be the Middle East’s only albeit undeclared nuclear power, Israel has supported tough sanctions against Iran but also insists on retaining the military option to halt its nuclear activities.

Before the 1979 Islamic revolution which brought the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power, Israel and the shah’s Iran had warm relations.

» Foreign Press Rents Tel Aviv Rooftops to Cover Iran War Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!.

Richard Silverstein
Wednesday, February 8, 2012

You remember the descriptions of the First Battle of Bull Run when all of Washington’s high society rode out in their fine carriages and horses to picnic under the shady trees and watch their Union boys send the Yankees packing?

Did they get the shock of their lives when the Rebel musket balls whizzed over their heads and the Union soldiers ran for their lives from the field? Or similarly, the Israelis in southern Israel who took lawn chairs out to watch the IDF smash Gaza to smithereens in 2009? Here’s a picture of another group of expectant, thrilled Israelis watching the action.

That’s what the foreign press corps appears to be doing now in Tel Aviv in preparation for an attack on Iran. They’re renting the right to put film crews and reporters on the city’s rooftops (Hebrew) during the upcoming war in order to cover the anticipated Iranian counterattack. That way they can get great photo ops and pictures of missiles wreaking havoc on the city. What a story! What a feast for the eyes! Other news organizations like CBS, Fox News, and NBC are sending their senior producers to Israel to scope out the place in case they have to send in the big boys–the news anchors and senior correspondents (especially since no one can report from Teheran!).

We can’t wait! I don’t know why I should have to point out that this is irony. But there are some right-wingers who have neither a sense of irony nor humor. So it’s for them I guess.

Marines ‘assault’ US beaches in amphibious drill.

With beach landings, 25 naval ships and an air assault, the United States and eight other countries are staging a major amphibious exercise on the US East Coast this week, fighting a fictional enemy that bears more than a passing resemblance to Iran.

After a decade dominated by ground wars against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, the drill dubbed Bold Alligator is “the largest amphibious exercise conducted by the fleet in the last 10 years,” said Admiral John Harvey, head of US Fleet Forces Command.

About 20,000 US forces, plus hundreds of British, Dutch and French troops as well as liaison officers from Italy, Spain, New Zealand and Australia are taking part in the exercise along the Atlantic coast off Virginia and North Carolina.

An American aircraft carrier, amphibious assault ships including France’s Mistral, Canadian mine sweepers and dozens of aircraft have been deployed for the drill, which began on January 30 and runs through mid-February.

Monday was “D-day” for Bold Alligator, with US Marines stepping on to the beach from hovercraft, near the Camp Lejeune base in North Carolina.

The American military, mindful that Marines have spent most of their time in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan since 2001, said the goal was “to revitalize, refine, and strengthen fundamental amphibious capabilities and reinforce the Navy and Marine Corps role as ‘fighters from the sea.'”

With defense spending coming under pressure after years of unlimited growth, the Marines — which devoted a brigade to the exercise — also are anxious to protect funding for their traditional role as an amphibious force.

The exercise scenario takes place in a mythical region known as “Treasure Coast,” with a country called Garnet, a theocracy, invading its neighbor to the north, Amberland, which calls for international help to repel the attack.

Garnet has mined several harbors and deployed anti-ship missiles along the coast.

The threat of mines, anti-ship missiles and small boats in coastal waters conjure up Iran’s naval forces, but the commanders overseeing the drill, Admiral Harvey and Marine Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, say the scenario is not based on any particular country.

Amid rising tensions with Iran and threats from Tehran to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, naval officers and military planners are keenly aware of the Islamic Republic’s arsenal of mines and anti-ship missiles.

When asked by reporters last week, Harvey acknowledged that the exercise scenario was “certainly informed by recent history” and that it was “applicable” to the Strait of Hormuz, as well as other areas.

Harvey also said the exercise incorporated lessons from the 2006 Lebanon conflict, when Iran-backed Hezbollah forces hit an Israeli navy corvette with an anti-ship missile.

The Pentagon opened the drill to allied forces for the first time this year, with 650 French troops among those participating.

In their AMX-10 wheeled reconnaissance vehicles and VAB armored personnel carriers, the mission of the French forces was “to land first to secure a path for the Americans,” said Second Lieutenant Chens Bouriche, a French military spokesman.

Jeffrey Goldberg – Authors – The Atlantic.

This just in from the Department of Non-Ambiguous Iranian Threats to Wipe Out The Jews: A regime-linked website, Alef, has produced an article calling on Iran to use its missile arsenal to kill all of Israel’s Jews, and describes just how this could be done. The author, Alireza Forghani, is linked to office of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and the article’s release coincided with Khamenei’s latest “Israel is a cancerous tumor” speech.

Here’s a bit of Forghani wrote (you can read the entire translation on MEMRI’s website):

“Israel is the only country in the world with a Jewish majority. According to the last census of [the] ‘Israel Central Bureau of Statistics,’ this country has a population of 7.5 million, including 5.8 million Jews. The other ethnicities in [its] population structure are Muslims, Christians, Druzes [sic], and Samarians. The largest ethnic minorities are [the] so-called Israeli Arabs.”
“Residents of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and H[a]ifa can be targeted even by Shah[a]b 3 [missiles]. Population density in these three adjacent areas composes about 60% of [the total] Israeli population. Sejjil missiles can target power plants, sewage treatment facilities, energy resources, [and] transportation and [communication] infrastructures; and in the second stage, Shahab 3, Ghadr, and Ashura missiles can target urban settlements until [the] final annihilation of Israel[‘s] people.

But here is my favorite part of the MEMRI entry:

Alireza Forghani provides the following details about himself on his blog:

“forghani_alireza@yahoo.com”

“Married, a resident of Tehran, born August 31, 1983
“Telephone: 09124906386
“Favorite book: The Absolute Rule of the Jurisprudent
“Favorite sport: Jihad in fierce war”

I’ve emailed at Forghani at his Yahoo address, seeking an interview.

U.S. Attack on Iran ‘Suicide,’ Would Spark Reprisal, Envoy Says.

Ladane Nasseri and Stepan Kravchenko, ©2012 Bloomberg News

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Iranian leaders are willing to carry out an attack in the U.S. in response to real or perceived actions that threaten their government, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told Congress on Jan. 31.

Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) — A U.S. attack on Iran would be “suicide” that would prompt retaliation, said Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi, the Persian Gulf country’s ambassador to Russia,

“Iran has very good access to the whole world to carry out strikes against America,” he told reporters in Moscow today, adding that no pre-emptive strike is planned.

Iranian armed forces are closely monitoring hostile powers’ activities in the region, including along Iran’s borders, and are ready to counter possible aggression, said Abdollah Reshadi, commander of the northeastern air defense unit. “Iran’s air defense is on the alert for foreign powers’ military moves and fully prepared to counter any threats against the country,” he said today, according to state-run Press TV.

Israeli leaders, who have accused Iran of working toward building a nuclear weapon, say time is running out for a military strike that could stop the Islamic Republic from pursuing that aim. President Barack Obama told NBC News on Feb. 5 that “our preferred solution is diplomatic, but we’re not going to take any actions off the table.”

Iran, which says its atomic activities are designed to ensure electricity for its growing population, is under four rounds of United Nations sanctions and additional restrictions imposed by the U.S. and the European Union. Iran has threatened to shut the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of globally traded oil passes, as the EU prepares to ban imports of Iranian crude on July 1.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta this month declined to comment directly on a report by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius that Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June. He and other U.S. officials have warned Israel not to act alone.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Feb. 2 that his country must consider conducting “an operation” before Iran reaches an “immunity zone,” referring to Iran’s goal of protecting its uranium enrichment and other nuclear operations by moving them to deep underground facilities.

Iran doesn’t recognize Israel as a legitimate state and backs the Lebanese Hezbollah movement and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which it describes as “resistance” groups and the U.S. and Israel classify as terrorists.

“Wherever there is cruelty, there will be resistance, and wherever there is resistance, we will be there,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at a conference in Tehran today. He said Iran “isn’t seeking to rule the world or dominate anyone.”