WarSclerotic

Amb. Marc Ginsberg: Are “All Options on the Table” Really? Or Really!.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Morocco

Want to buy a ticket to the Obama administration’s semi-satirical Iran Nuclear Kabuki Theater show entitled “All Options are on the Table!”?

If ALL options are on the table (aka as a last resort the U.S. would use military force to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon) then why is the Pentagon’s senior brass trotting out in public to undercut the White House… thus undermining the threat’s credibility even if the U.S. just won’t use force to deny Iran the pleasure of a nuclear device.

It seems that every few days another senior U.S. military official seeks out a handy dandy journalist or just blurts out that attacking Iran is not in the cards, not justified, too dangerous, etc. etc. and, for good measure, darkly warning Israel it had better get with the U.S. program. Let me assert categorically that the uniformed naysayers have many a valid reason not to want to be drawn into a preemptive war with Iran. But the spectacle of all this public hand-wringing is certainly not sending shivers down the Ayatollahs’ spines.

For an issue that rises to the highest considerations of national security one would think the president would sit his military leadership down and remind them of the old adage that “loose lips sink ships.”

Our commander-in-chief deserves wise counsel from his commanders, but they are not doing the president or the nation any good by trying to force his hand in the court of public opinion, just as others on the Republican side are trying to box him in, as well. Obama knows the stakes, and generals are not the final arbiters of American national security interests. Just ask Generals McClellan and MacArthur. There have been plenty of times in U.S. history, and it is still uncertain where this is heading, that national security and foreign policy stakes are simply greater than a general’s own views.

The Obama administration has done a masterful job ratcheting up economic sanctions on Iran. Moreover, and cynically to some, the president’s political operatives — focused only on campaigns and not on national interests — are desperately trying to kick the can past 2012, but Iran shows no signs, yet, of backing down its doomsday ladder. That tug-of-war is only adding to this public spectacle of diminishing U.S. credibility.

So as tensions rise with Iran, does the Obama administration really truly believe (and thus want Tehran to believe) that Iran + bomb = a major national threat to the U.S, or is this just political pabulum?

“All options are on the table” has been uttered so many times by Obama administration officials that it has taken on the air of holy scripture.

Act I: January 24, 2012 President Obama in State of the Union: “all options, including diplomacy… are on the table.”

Act II: Super Bowl Sunday: President Obama’s pre-Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer: “But we’re not going to take any options off the table, and I’ve been very clear that we’re going to do everything we can to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”

Act III: February 11, 2012 SecDef Leon Panetta warns that “all options are on the table” if Iran “… goes nuclear.”

But just when the president had his team’s message synchronized, along came Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dempsey, who on Feb 19, 2012 strayed off the reservation on CNN’s Farid Zakaria and blurted out that Iran is a “rational actor in the international arena” and that “we know” that Iran does not intend to build a nuclear weapon.” Really?

Does the good general know something his Secretary of Defense or president doesn’t know? What is one to make of Gen. Dempsey’s statements? Are his views merely personal opinions or reflective of administration policy? One can only conclude that the seemingly out-of-step Dempsey was firing a warning shot at his political superiors that the senior brass doesn’t buy into the much hawked “all options are on the table” Iran policy.

Memo to Gen. Dempsey: you just pulled the rug out President Obama’s efforts to convince an increasingly worried Israel that the U.S. will not abandon it if Iran goes for the bomb, and in the meantime Jerusalem should keep its powder dry.

For the Israelis, l’affaire Dempsey is the latest example that throughout their respective histories Israel and the U.S. have rarely seen eye to eye on each nation’s vital national security threats. As John Foster Dulles — one of Israel’s most pernicious American adversaries — is purported to have said: “nations have interests, not friends.”

In the 1956 Suez Crisis, Israel buckled under Dulles’ warnings to withdraw from the Suez Canal despite Nasser’s terrorist attacks against Israel.

In the eve of the 1967 Six Day War, Lyndon Johnson opposed Israel’s preemptive strike. “Israel will not be alone unless it acts alone,” Johnson warned Israeli Foreign Minister Eban just weeks before Israel’s strike.

In 1973, Henry Kissinger imprudently dissuaded Golda Meir from preemptively attacking massed Egyptian and Syrian forces on the eve of the Yom Kippur War.

And in 1981 when Israel bombed Saddam’s nuclear reactor at Osirak, even President Reagan delayed delivery of jet fighters to Israel and had his UN envoy Jeanne Kirkpatrick collude with her Iraqi counterpart to draft a resolution condemning the Israeli raid.

So what is the “real clear” assessment of Iran’s nuclear program from the IAEA and other public intelligence reports? This is what we know today of Iran’s nuclear program:

1. Iran has accelerated production of uranium in excess of what it would need for merely peaceful purposes at secret underground sites outside Qom in two sites known as Fordo and a military site known as Parchin.

2. There is nothing in the public domain indicating that Iran has exceeded the 20% “peaceful program” enrichment level; however, the most recent IAEA report states that Iran’s secret enrichment sites exist to exceed the 20% enrichment levels.

3. The Iranians sent its invited IAEA inspectors packing last week stonewalling on publicly reported IAEA fears that Tehran’s nuclear program has military dimensions to it.

4. The IAEA has found evidence that Iran has begun work on nuclear warhead designs in violation of its international treaty obligations.

5. U.S. intelligence is unconvinced that Iran has made a decision to actually build a bomb; although Israeli and British intelligence disagree with the CIA’s assumption. Washington is basing its assessment on thin reeds of intel; its analysis is more speculative than factual; but neither does Israel have proof that Iran has flipped that coin yet.

6. Israeli and EU officials believe that Iran will cross the proverbial “red line” when it is able to enrich sufficient uranium to the 90% weapons grade material.

7. Washington’s red line is different than Israel’s and the EU: right now the U.S. red line will only be crossed when the U.S. has sufficient intel to prove that Iran is actually constructing a bomb.

Whether or not Iran decides to build an actual bomb, President Obama should get his campaign staff and his generals in the same room and read them the riot act. The best way to convince Israel to defer a preemptive attack on Iran and recalibrate itself to Washington’s assessment is for Obama to convincingly reassure Israeli PM Netanyahu (and concurrently keep Tehran off balance) that “all options are on the table… Really!”

Dempsey defends his remarks on Israel – The Hill’s DEFCON Hill.

(Phasers on weasel ! – JW)

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told a Senate panel on Tuesday he did not counsel Israel against attacking Iran over its nuclear program.

Gen. Martin Dempsey told lawmakers on the Senate Budget Committee, “We’ve had a conversation with them about time, the issue of time.”

Dempsey also defended his comment that Iran is a “rational actor,” which has been criticized by Republicans.

Dempsey said that he doesn’t mistake Iran’s rhetoric for a lack of reason, and said that even Iran’s actions that are unacceptable to the United States fit the country’s pattern over the past 30 years.

“We can’t afford to underestimate our potential adversaries by writing them off as irrational,” Dempsey said.

It was the first time he’s addressed remarks he made in a CNN interview in which he referred to the Iranian government as a “rational actor” and said an attack by Israel on Iran would be “destabilizing” and “not prudent.” Those comments drew the ire of Israeli officials.

Alon Ben-Meir: Iran: Obama’s Indecisiveness Makes Israeli Strike Likely.

The failure of President Obama to impose crippling sanctions a few months after assuming office in 2009 makes the prospect of an Israeli strike on Iran nuclear facilities in the coming few months increasingly more likely. To prevent Israel from taking unilateral action against Iran, the Obama administration must insist that any resumption of negotiations is conditioned upon the immediate suspension of all uranium enrichment activities and acceptance of complete oversight from the International Atomic and Energy Agency (IAEA). Otherwise, the U.S. will have to deal with the serious repercussions of potentially a major conflagration in the Middle East with its unpredictably dire consequences.

After the boastful approach of his predecessor, George W. Bush, and being mired in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama had every reason to adopt a more moderated position towards the Islamic world, including Iran. Such a new strategy, however, cannot be adopted at the expense of losing sight of Iran’s cunning and determination to master the technology to build nuclear weapons. In 2008, I proposed to the incoming Obama Administration a new approach to Iran that would address Iran’s legitimate concerns including according Iran the respects it seeks, ending the threats against regime change and allaying Iran’s security concerns. This approach would be accompanied by a new negotiation structure with a time line to produce an agreement, the failure of which would automatically begin a process of imposing crippling sanctions while leaving the military option on the table should the negotiations fail.

Nonetheless, this combined approach failed to materialize and the crippling sanctions, particularly the boycott of financial transactions through the Iranian Central Bank and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), while ending the purchase of oil by Western countries, did not take place until three years later. Indeed, it was only when this measure started to bite that the Iranian leadership began to feel the pain and expressed their desire to re-engage in negotiations. Most observers familiar with Iran’s pattern of diplomacy agree that not much will come out of renewed negotiations because the Iranian leadership simply does not believe that the U.S. will engage in major new hostilities in the Middle East, especially in an election year and when the Obama administration has convinced itself that Iran is still a couple of years away before it has the ability to develop nuclear capabilities of its own. The question is: will Israel buy into the American emphasis on negotiations and sanctions which have not proven to be effective or decide to act on its own?

Throughout the past few years, Israel has established a set of red lines, the crossing of which would oblige it to consider attacking Iran’s nuclear program: 1) If Israel determines conclusively that Iran has come very close to mastering the technology to produce a nuclear device; 2) If the international sanctions are not crippling enough to stop Iran from pursuing highly enriched weapons-grade uranium; and 3) If the U.S. is not prepared to undertake military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities despite the clear evidence of Iran’s closeness to acquiring nuclear weapons. These three red lines, if not already crossed, might now be very close to occurring. More importantly, these conditions may soon become irrelevant as Iran is moving its nuclear weapons program underground. By so doing, Israel’s Minister of Defense Ehud Barak warned last month, the Iranians may soon be in a position to operate their nuclear program in what he called “an immunity zone” where bombing, however extensive, would not stall their program as the facilities will be impenetrable. From the Israeli perspective, this closes Israel’s window of opportunity to take action. Thus, time has become of the essence as the Iranians may be in a position to transfer their most sensitive nuclear technology deep underground.

The other part of the Israeli calculations is that the Middle East regional environment is now more conducive to taking action against Iran. Tehran has long threatened to turn any strike against its nuclear facilities into a wider regional war through its allies Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. But Tehran’s ability to carry out these threats is increasingly questionable. On the one hand, the Assad regime in Damascus is too weak militarily to engage Israel and is too busy suppressing a popular uprising to provide significant weapon transfers to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The latter finds itself in limbo partly because of reduced financial and logistical support from Iran through Syria, and partly because it has lost its credibility in the Arab street after backing Assad’s murderous crackdown. More importantly, Israel’s destructive air strikes on Lebanon in summer 2006 will likely inform any Hezbollah retaliatory action against Israel.

On the other hand, it is no longer a given that Hamas would come to Iran’s aid as Hamas’ leadership is now focused on reaching a power-sharing agreement with the Fatah movement and has dramatically distanced itself from the Assad regime by condemning its atrocities against the Syrian people and vacating its Damascus headquarters. Moreover, Hamas is certainly in no position to repeat the painful experience of Israel’s Cast Lead Operation in January 2009. Some might argue that such an Israeli strike on Iran would endanger its already deteriorating relations with the Arab world. In fact, while the Arab public would likely condemn such an attack, the Sunni Arab world, which fears a nuclear Iran perhaps more than Israel does, would be happy to see the Iranian nuclear ambition go up in smoke. Finally, Israel might calculate that, because of the general elections in the U.S., it would be best to act against Iran sooner rather than later to avoid continuing regional instability punctuated with violence at the height of the Presidential elections.

Obviously, Israel would not have found itself seriously deliberating to undertake a preventive military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities without U.S. approval had the Obama Administration acted more resolutely on the Iran sanctions much earlier and made them crippling much sooner, especially in 2009 and 2010. By then, it had already become clear that the Iranian leadership was not interested in rapprochement with the U.S. or abandoning its nuclear program. If the U.S. can afford to live with a nuclear Iran thanks to its vast deterrent capacity or geographic distance, Israel does not have that luxury, at least from a psychological perspective. To employ Western rationale in the form of an Iranian-Israeli relationship based on mutual deterrence is misleading. Such a view requires an understanding of how things are being run in Iran, whose leadership believes that destroying Israel is in and of itself an advantage, even if it means the subsequent death of millions of their own fellow citizens as a result of an Israeli massive second strike capability.

By no means is this advocating a military strike against Iran. Rather, it is meant to show that such a military strike is becoming more likely thanks to the failures of the Obama Administration policy whose very aim, ironically, is to avoid a military confrontation. This policy failure is metastasizing. According to the most recent IAEA report (PDF), not only have its inspectors been denied access to suspected nuclear facilities at the Parchin military base in Iran, but the Iranians have also produced a 50 percent increase in their stockpile of enriched uranium, most of which is coming from a newly-opened plant built inside mountain bunkers at Fordow. Instead of working on what the IAEA report reveals, the U.S. has chosen to distance itself even more as the U.S. intelligence community has only this week, perhaps for the first time, discarded the IAEA assessment by arguing that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb.

To obviate an Israeli strike the Obama Administration must show Iran that it means business. At this stage, instead of dancing to Iran’s tunes by engaging in prolonged negotiations that are only meant to play for time, the P5+1 nations (Britain, China, France, Russia, the U.S. — plus Germany) should not miss the forest for the trees. The negotiation process has never been an end in and of itself but rather a tool to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. To that end, the P5+1 should insist that even starting negotiations is conditioned upon an Iranian acceptance of immediately suspending all enrichment activities and provide full, nation-wide access to the IAEA inspectors in accordance with Tehran’s commitments as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and its Additional Protocol. Second, the P5+1 should set a limit on the timeframe of these negotiations to a maximum of three to four months. Otherwise, Iran might well reach its “zone of immunity” even while conducting talks. Finally, the Obama administration must make it publically clear that it cannot dictate to Israel, which feels existentially threatened by Iran’s nuclear activities, how and when to act. This emphasis on Israel’s liberty of action might persuade Iran to rethink its nuclear strategy since both former Vice President Cheney and Vice President Biden have emphasized Israel’s sovereign prerogatives.

If these three afore-listed conditions are not met by Iran, it will make no practical difference whether or not negotiations are held. Israel might then draw its own conclusion and act as it sees fit. Time is now of the essence given Israel’s very recent declassification of the planning and operations of its June 1981 attack on Iraq’s Osirak Nuclear Reactor outside Baghdad. Surely, the Obama administration must realize that any Israeli military action is likely to draw in the United States.

Convergence and Divergence in U.S. and Israel Policy on Iran | Jerusalem Post – Blogs.

Dershowitz Tells Newsmax: Obama Could Be ‘Chamberlain of 21st Century’.

President Barack Obama is in danger of going down in history as “the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century,” if he fails to stop Iran’s development of the nuclear bomb, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz tells Newsmax.TV.

“I know Obama, I like Obama, I voted for Obama,” Dershowitz said in the exclusive interview. “I hope he is not remembered in history as the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century, the person who didn‘t see the greatest evil, didn’t recognize the greatest evil of the 20th century, as Chamberlain did not.”

Chamberlain was the British Prime minister who signed the 1938 Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler, ceding part of Czechoslovakia to Germany and failing to see the threat the Nazis posed.

“Without a doubt,” the Middle East will be a factor in voters’ minds when they go to the polls in November, Dershowitz said.

And he named four swing states — Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania — in which fears about Iran and the administration’s lukewarm support for Israel could be a critical issue.

“If Iran were to develop nuclear weapons prior to the election, that would be a disaster for Obama’s reelection prospects,” Dershowitz said.

Obama himself generally has shown that he is friendly to the Jewish state, but some of his subordinates, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, have not.

Panetta “has been talking with mixed messages,” while Dempsey “made the absurd statement that Iran should be considered a rational actor,” the lawyer said.

“Rational actors don’t kill their own people,” Dershowitz thundered. “Rational actors don’t slaughter and execute thousands of their own people; rational actors don’t deny the holocaust; rational actors don’t call for the state of Israel to be wiped off the map.”

Dershowitz said he accepts that Obama has the right to criticize some aspects of Israel’s policies, such as building settlements on the West Bank. “It’s fair to be critical of Israeli policies as you can be critical of American policies. I am a loyal patriot of this country and I criticize some of our own policies and I support many of our own policies.”

But he added, “The true test of Obama’s support for Israel will come over Iran. Iran poses an existential threat, not only to Israel’s existence, but to America’s safety.”

Dershowitz also called for Obama to cut ties with the left-wing website, Media Matters for America, because of the stance of its senior foreign policy fellow, M.J. Rosenberg, on Israel.

Calling Rosenberg a “bigot,” Dershowitz said the senior fellow “has crossed the line from anti-Israel, to anti-Zionism, to anti-Semitism.”

He quoted a tweet that Rosenberg issued last year in which he attacked the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) over alleged dual loyalty. “Saying AIPAC is guilty of dual loyalty is giving it credit for one more loyalty than it holds,” Rosenberg tweeted.

In another Twitter message, Rosenberg called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “terrorist.” In an article on the website, he called the country’s president, Shimon Peres “an uberhawk on Iran.”

“It essentially accuses AIPAC of treason, of being disloyal to the United States, as having no loyalty to the United States,” Dershowitz said. “It calls Benjamin Netanyahu a terrorist. It calls the president of Israel, Shimon Perez, who everybody knows is a peace-loving man, the hawk on Iran.”

Dershowitz denounced the George Soros-backed Media Matters as “a vicious organization” that depicts Americans who support Israel as putting that support over loyalty to their own country.

He pointed out that both Soros and Rosenberg are Jewish. “Let’s remember Jews voted for Mussolini, individual Jews voted for Stalin. Jews do things that everybody else does — they can act foolishly.

“Soros has said over and over again that he is very anti-Zionist, he would never support a Zionist organization. He doesn’t like Israel. He may have been born Jewish, but he turned against his own people even during the Second World War.

“I don’t have a lot of respect for George Soros, he makes a lot of money, but his political views are very, very hard left and often very, very, very, very antagonistic to American interests.

“I don’t believe Media Matters should be respected by the White House and by President Obama,” he said, adding that he is not sure how much Obama himself knows about the website’s views.

“But the White House is in close touch with Media Matters, and they have to disassociate themselves from Media Matters unless Media Matters fires this bigot, M.J. Rosenberg, distances itself from his statements, and apologizes for what he has said. Otherwise, this becomes a major election issue.”

Dershowitz said that Media Matters was first set up to be “a kind of offset to Fox News,” adding, “Media Matters claimed they weren’t really fair and balanced and they were going to attack Fox — they called it the Fox Hunt.

“They are violating their trust to Americans. They are not an objective organization and they have crossed the line into bigotry. George Washington said 200-and-something years ago, ‘To bigotry we will give no sanction.’ He said in America we are all equal and we do not tolerate bigots — and M.J. Rosenberg is a bigot.”lection? Vote Here Now!

Iran’s Threat to Israel: Is It Credible? – International Business Times.

By Walt Osterman

Vodpod videos no longer available.

World is silent, again – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Syria slaughter turning into full-scale genocide, yet world makes do with empty talk

Noah Klieger

It is true that the term “Shoah” is reserved, regrettably, to the Jewish people and only to it. Yet that’s not the case with respect to the term “genocide.”

A real genocide has been taking place in Syria for many months now. It is both organized and methodical. Bashar Assad’s loyal forces are murdering, in cold blood and indiscriminately, their own countrymen who dare to demand freedom and human rights.

The eye doctor who studied and was educated in Europe, and appeared like a civilized man when he took power in Syria, has been exposed as a brutal, blood-thirsty dictator ordering his loyalists to massacre the rivals of his regime of horrors.

Many thousands of Syrians – men, women and children – have already been butchered on Assad’s orders, and this slaughter has no end in sight. The scope of the killing expands every day and is turning into full-scale genocide, with the Syrian army razing whole cities.

Words but no action

Yet the world is silent. Silent again I should say. Indeed, there are states – including Arab ones – that make a little noise. Some leaders speak out. There are even forums called to discuss the horrifying reality. However, we see no actions at all.

This is the case even though the butcher from Damascus does not attempt to hide his actions and the acts undertaken by his subordinates. He is not even ashamed of them. The opposite is true, as we can see time and again thanks to the sophisticated means of communication available to the world in this day and age.

Yet still, we see no intervention; neither by the Europeans, nor by the Americans or the various Arab states, which express their outrage against this genocide with words alone.

Only a short while ago, the Europeans intervened in Libya and came to the rescue of those who rebelled against Gaddafi the tyrant. Yet in Syria, all we see is empty talk.

Top Iran official: Enemies will face ‘rainy day’ weapons in case of attack – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi hails Iran’s independent weapons industry, military, adding that the U.S. would have to take a ‘new environment’ under consideration.

By Haaretz

Iran is prepared with hidden “rainy day” military capabilities it is saving for when it is attacked, Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said on Tuesday, warning potential enemies of a “new environment” created by Iran’s developing arms industry.

	Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right, waving to media as he arrives with his Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Feb. 26, 2012.
	Photo by: AP

Earlier Tuesday, a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the discussions between top Israeli officials and Pentagon counterparts said that Israel indicated it would not warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.

• Dowload Haaretz’s new and improved app for iPhone and Android

The pronouncement, delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations, sets a tense tone ahead of meetings in the coming days at the White House and Capitol Hill.

Israeli officials said that if they eventually decide a strike is necessary, they would keep the Americans in the dark to decrease the likelihood that the U.S. would be held responsible for failing to stop Israel’s potential attack.

Referring to the possibility of an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the country’s defense minister warned possible perpetrators of Iran’s secret weapons capabilities, saying that the “Islamic Republic of Iran has many hidden capabilities which are kept for rainy days.”

“We have not yet revealed all our capabilities,” Vahidi told the semi-official Fars news agency, stressing the added value of Iran’s independently run and operated military industry.

“Undoubtedly, since our defense is an independent and defensive one based on our own defensive policies, special defense doctrines and our own indigenous defense and internal capabilities, the U.S. will face a completely new environment when gets involved with the new issues that Iran is pursuing and it will be obliged to think of this new environment,” Vahidi said

The top Iranian official also spoke of what he said was the United States’ inability to influence Iran’s military progress, saying that, “naturally, they cannot reach this point since we have not displayed all our capabilities and capacities.”

“These days Americans badly fear that an incident happens in the region and they can’t stand against the Islamic Republic’s firm positions vis-à-vis that given event,” Vahidi told Fars.

Netanyahu: Nuclear Iran Would Choke World Economy – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

PM Binyamin Netanyahu

Israel news photo: Flash 90

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday warned a nuclear-armed Iran would exercise de facto control the major Gulf oil producers and “choke” the global economy.

“Everyone needs to understand that if we’re worried today about rising oil prices we shall be far more worried if Iran, heaven forbid, gains control over the energy centers in the Persian Gulf,” Netanyahu on Israeli radio. “Iran would be able to dictate far higher oil prices and, by so doing, choke the world economy.”

“Anyone who is interested in stopping the manipulative use of oil production, its influence on world markets, the threats to the world’s economies, must also for that reason enlist to stop Iran’s nuclear race,” he added.

His comments come amid world concern over spiking oil prices due to Iran’s ability to negatively impact energy markets.

Israel, the United States, its Western allies, and Gulf Arab states fear Iran’s self-proclaimed peaceful nuclear program is a weak facade for a nuclear weapons program.

Tehran denies the charge, but the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report on Friday that Iran had tripled its capacity to enrich uranium to 20-percent purity since November.

Enriching uranium to 20 percent is a major step towards purifying it to the 90-percent level needed for a nuclear weapon.

Most analysts believe Iran already has a sufficient stockpile of 20% enriched uranium to produce a 15 kiloton nuclear weapon should Tehran decide to push for weaponization. That process, they say, would take Iran 2.5 to 3 months.

Israel, which maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity is widely considered to the sole nuclear power in the Middle East, and has said all options – meaning a potential military strike – are on the table ensure Iran doesn’t join the so-called “nuclear club.”

Iranian officials have repeatedly called for the destruction of Jewish state and called Israel a “one bomb state.”

However, Jerusalem is under intense pressure from Washington and Europe not to launch a pre-emptive military strike, leading Israeli officials to charge they are more concerned about oil prices and imminent electoral races than world security.

Netanyahu has said Iran will top the agenda when he meets with US President Barack Obama for talks in the White House on March 5.