JERUSALEM - In the clearest indication yet
that Israel now believes Iran's nuclear
aspirations will be curbed, Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert has said that efforts being undertaken by
the international community will ensure that
Tehran does not acquire nuclear capability.
In a series of interviews on the eve of
the Passover holiday, Olmert sounded the same
message: Iran will not get the bomb. "I want to
tell the citizens of Israel: Iran will not have
nuclear capability," he told the daily Ha'aretz
newspaper.
"The international community is
making an enormous effort - in which we have a
part, but which is being led by the international
community - so that Iran will not attain
non-conventional
capability. And I
believe, and also know, that the bottom line of
these efforts is that Iran will not be nuclear."
Until now, Israeli leaders have been far
more equivocal when quizzed about Iran's nuclear
program. A common reply has been that "all
options" are on the table - a reference to the
possibility that Israel might employ military
means in trying to thwart Iran's nuclear drive.
Tehran insists its nuclear program is
civilian in nature and is meant to generate power.
But Israel believes Iran is bent on developing
nuclear weapons. Threats by Iranian President
Mahmud Ahmadinejad to "wipe Israel off the map"
have further heightened fears in the Jewish state.
In the past, some US leaders have
suggested that Israel might launch a strike
against Iran in a bid to destroy or severely
damage its nuclear facilities. "Given the fact
that Iran has a stated policy that their objective
is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might
well decide to act first, and let the rest of the
world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess
afterwards," US Vice President Dick Cheney once
cautioned.
Twenty-seven years ago, Israel
did just that when its fighter jets bombed a
nuclear reactor Saddam Hussein had built, wiping
out the Iraqi leader's nuclear ambitions with a
single pin-point strike. A repeat performance in
Iran would be much more complicated. The Iranians
have learned from the Iraqi experience and have
spread their nuclear plants around the country.
They have also built them deep underground and
behind thick shields of reinforced concrete.
With the George W Bush administration,
chastised by its experience in Iraq, having
seemingly lost its appetite for another military
escapade in the Middle East, efforts by the US and
Europe to deter Tehran from going nuclear are
focused largely in the diplomatic realm.
Talks in China last week looked not just
at sanctions against Iran, but also "incentives"
aimed at persuading Tehran to curb its nuclear
pursuit. US State Department spokesman Sean
McCormack said that officials from the US, Russia,
Britain, France, Germany, China and the European
Union were looking "at the incentive side of the
equation".
If Olmert now believes that the
efforts of the international community will bear
fruit, then his comments seem to reflect an
Israeli conviction that diplomatic means will be
central in stopping Iran from going nuclear.
In the Passover interviews, he also
counseled behind-the-scenes actions over the type
of public breast-beating one of his ministers
recently engaged in. If Iran attacked Israel,
Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said,
Israel would respond with such force that it would
result in "the destruction of the Iranian nation".
"The less we talk, the better," Olmert
told the daily Ma'ariv. "We mustn't issue threats,
like the things I heard recently."
The
prime minister also hammered home another message:
Iran does not pose a threat to Israel alone.
Ahmadinejad's threats against Israel and "his
suggestions that we move to Alaska or Germany,
constitute a direct threat", the prime minister
said. "But this is not just a threat to us, but to
all of Western civilization. To its values, its
culture, its freedom."
The official
Iranian news agency IRNA reported earlier this
month that Iran had begun operating several
hundred new uranium-enriching centrifuges at its
main nuclear plant in Natanz. Ahmadinejad said
Iran was working to install 6,000 more centrifuges
in the plant, but did not say how many of them
were operational.
Iran has already
installed around 3,300 centrifuges at the Natanz
plant, according to Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of
the International Atomic Energy Agency. But
ElBaradei also said that Iran's progress in
uranium enrichment "has not been very fast".
Asked about the reports that Iran had
begun operating new centrifuges, Olmert said he
didn't want to "get into reports or argue over
details".
"I say again, that on the basis
of everything I know and read, Iran will not be
nuclear," the prime minister emphasized. "We are
doing everything possible, along with the
international community, at a level of intensity
and scope that are beyond all imagination, to
prevent the Iranian threat."
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