Israelis say they will not sit back and allow neighbor to build nuclear weapons Israel is standing by its right to take independent military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities despite pointed warnings from Washington not to break ranks with United States strategy. Uzi Arad, the national security adviser to Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told a radio interviewer on Thursday the government will not stand by and watch Iran acquire the ability to make nuclear weapons. Arad said that during this week’s visit to Washington, Netanyahu “clarified that Israel reserves itself operational freedom and several of the most senior figures in the [President Barack] Obama administration said ‘of course’.” This is in some contrast to what Leon Panetta, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told a television interviewer on Wednesday.

Panetta said he recently went to Israel to talk to Netanyahu and warned him against striking at Iran’s nuclear facilities. “Netanyahu understands that if Israel goes it alone, it will mean big trouble. He knows that for the sake of Israeli security, they have to work together with others.” These views can be interpreted, of course, as simply differing inflections designed to appeal to domestic audiences. But it was noticeable during Netanyahu’s Washington visit that he only wanted to talk about the threat posed by Iran, especially when Obama was seeking clear support for the creation of a state for the Palestinians.

Nor could Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose frequent threats to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth feed international concerns about Tehran’s nuclear program, resist stirring the pot. On Wednesday he announced that Iran has test-fired a solid-fuel Sajjil-2 medium-range missile capable of delivering nuclear warheads to Israel, all U.S. bases in the Middle East and much of southeast Europe. Undoubtedly a reason for Ahmadinejad’s announcement was an attempt to gather nationalist support for the June 12 presidential election when he faces three moderate candidates, at least two of whom are open to Obama’s offer of attempting to overcome 30 years of hostility between Washington and Tehran through dialogue.

Ahmadinejad is increasingly blamed at home for high inflation and unemployment because of his anti-Western bluster. Iran is the second largest oil exporter in the world, but the economy is suffering from three sets of sanctions imposed by the United Nations because of Tehran’s duplicity over its nuclear program, which it insists is solely for peaceful purposes — despite contrary evidence. U.S. intelligence agencies believe Tehran will not be able to make a nuclear weapon before 2013, but Israeli intelligence maintains Iran could have the bomb anytime between now and 2012.

A 114-page study of how Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear sites done by Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies and published last week concludes it is questionable whether Israel has the military capability to destroy Iran’s nuclear program or even delay it for several years. The study says that because Iran has dozens of nuclear development facilities, many of them unknown, Israel’s only option is to try to destroy three key sites. Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun