WarSclerotic

The US would have at least one year to take action against Iran should it decide to develop a nuclear weapon, Leon Panetta, defence secretary said on Tuesday, underlining the increasingly public disagreement between the US and Israel over Iran.

Mr Panetta’s timeline, which is longer than some experts have indicated, reinforces the Obama administration’s view that there is still space to use sanctions and diplomacy to deal with Iran’s nuclear programme.

However, he was speaking after Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister, expressed his growing frustration at the US for not articulating clear deadlines for when the US believes it will need to take military action.“The fact is that every day that passes, Iran gets closer and closer to nuclear bombs,” Mr Netanyahu said on Tuesday.

“The world tells Israel: ‘Wait. There’s still time.’ And I say: ‘Wait for what? Wait until when?’ Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.”

The basic argument is one that has been rumbling for some time, with Israel paying close attention to Iran’s “capability” to make a nuclear weapon, while the US is more focused on efforts to build an actual weapon.

However, it has been brought into sharper focus by advances in Iran’s nuclear programme and the perception that the election in the US gives Israel some form of political leverage.

Mr Panetta was asked on CBS Television how long it would take Iran to build a weapon after it had made the decision to do so. “It’s roughly about a year right now. A little more than a year,” he said. “We think we will have the opportunity once we know that they’ve made that decision, [to] take the action necessary to stop [Iran].”

He added: “We know generally what they’re up to. And so we keep a close track on them.”

On Monday, Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, said that the Obama administration did not intend to set a deadline for when it might abandon negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programme, another comment that appeared to push back against Mr Netanyahu’s call for the US to set “red lines” on military action.

Responding to a question about the negotiations, Jay Carney, White House spokesman, said on Monday: “We believe that there remains time and space for that effort to bear fruit.”

Speaking in Washington on Tuesday, Dan Halutz, former chief of staff of the Israeli Defence Force, said he did not believe there would be an ‘October surprise’ of a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran. “My feeling is no one is going to surprise [anyone] in the near future,” he said. He added that it did not make sense to set public “red lines” for possible military action.