Iran Nuclear Watch: Israel Wants West to Deal More Urgently with Iran

German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives at the Blair House, Thursday Jan. 12, 2006, Washington. Chanceller Merkel, is making her first trip to the United States since taking office on November 22 and will meet with Preisedent George W. Bush with a focus on the Iran nuclear crisis.

New York Times: Israel Wants West to Deal More Urgently With Iran

With Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” Israeli officials have special reasons for concern now that Iran has defied the West and said it will resume enriching uranium.

The Israelis are engaged in a careful effort to press the United States and the Europeans to deal more urgently with Iran. Israel has no intention for now of trying to deal with Iran alone or through military means, officials say.

But Israeli officials are worried that politicians in the United States and Europe are focusing on estimates of when Iran might actually have a bomb – rather than concentrating on the “point of no return,” perhaps within the next year, when they argue Iran may gain enough technical knowledge to make the fissile material needed for a weapon. After that point, in the Israeli view, it is simply a matter of time until Iran is nuclear-armed.

Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeev-Farkash, who retired Jan. 5 as Israel’s director of military intelligence, said Israel believed that the moment was no more than a year away, although estimates differ among governments, based on different views of how advanced Iranian technology has become. Once Iran starts enriching uranium, the general said, it will need just six months to a year to achieve the ability to produce fissile materials.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attends a meeting with Japanese Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki at the State Department in Washington January 12, 2006. Rice said on Thursday the United States did not have on its agenda the option of military action against Iran to curb its nuclear programs ‘at this point’

Despite the various estimates of the arrival of nuclear weapon capability for Iran, the question for the United States and its European allies will be: “what is the point of NO return for Iran’s nuclear program development?”

Stay tuned……..

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