JERUSALEM, July 29, (Agencies): An Israeli newspaper reported Sunday that the Obama administration’s top security official has briefed Israel on US plans for a possible attack on Iran, seeking to reassure it that Washington is prepared to act militarily should diplomacy and sanctions fail to pressure Tehran to abandon its nuclear enrichment program.
A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential talks, said the article in the Haaretz daily was incorrect.
Haaretz said National Security Adviser Tom Donilon laid out the plans before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a dinner at a visit to Israel earlier this month. It cited an unidentified senior American official as the source of its report, which came out as presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was telling Israel he would back an Israeli military strike against Iran.
The American official also said Donilon shared information on US weapons that could be used for such an attack, and on the US military’s ability to reach Iranian nuclear facilities buried deep underground, the newspaper said. It cited another US official involved in the talks with Israel as concluding that “the time for a military operation against Iran has not yet come.”
The Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential meeting, said, “Nothing in the article is correct. Donilon did not meet the prime minister for dinner, he did not meet him one-on-one, nor did he present operational plans to attack Iran.” He had no information when asked if Donilon had discussed any kind of attack plans with any Israeli official. Haaretz said another Israeli official attended for part of the meeting.
The US Embassy had no immediate comment. Haaretz cited Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the US National Security Council, as declining to comment on the confidential discussion between Netanyahu and Donilon.
Both Israel and the US think Iran’s ultimate aim is to develop weapons technology, and not just produce energy and medical isotopes as Tehran claims. US officials are concerned that Israel might attack Iranian nuclear facilities prematurely, and have been trying to convince Israeli leaders they can depend on Washington to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
Israeli leaders have repeatedly said they would not contract out their country’s security to another nation.
In Jerusalem on Sunday, a top Romney foreign policy adviser told reporters, “If Israel has to take action on its own, in order to stop Iran from developing the capability (to build a nuclear weapon), the governor would respect that decision.” Romney also thinks the option of a US attack should also be on the table.
The comment made ahead of Romney’s planned meetings in Jerusalem with Israeli leaders seemed to differ with attempts by President Barack Obama to convince Israel to avoid any preemptive attack and let a regimen of international sanctions squeeze Iran’s economy until it agrees to nuclear concessions.
The trip has had difficulties from the start, when he angered the British by questioning whether London was ready for the Olympics, a statement he was forced to walk back after a rebuke from Prime Minister David Cameron.
Romney hoped for a smoother trip in Israel even though the region’s politics are fraught with peril.
Senor told reporters that Romney believed the threat from Iran was approaching on a path involving two timelines.
In excerpts of a speech Romney was to deliver on Monday evening, the former Massachusetts governor planned to say that an aggressive approach to Tehran was needed to protect against a threat to the very existence of Israel, the closest US ally in the turbulent Middle East.
“When Iran’s leaders deny the Holocaust or speak of wiping this nation off the map, only the naive — or worse — will dismiss it as an excess of rhetoric,” he would say.
“Make no mistake: the ayatollahs in Tehran are testing our moral defences. They want to know who will object, and who will look the other way.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that international sanctions have so far made no impact on Iran’s nuclear programme and that a “strong and credible” military threat was needed.
“We have to be honest and say that all the sanctions and diplomacy so far have not set back the Iranian programme by one iota,” he said on meeting Romney.
“I believe that we need a strong and credible military threat, coupled with the sanctions, to have a chance to change that situation.”
In a Sunday interview with CBS News, Romney appeared, however, to distance himself from remarks made by a top foreign policy adviser Dan Senor. Romney said the United States supported Israel’s right to defend itself but would not expand on his remarks, saying he would hold to US political tradition of not differing with positions taken by a sitting government.
While Romney refused to criticize Obama’s policy directly, he insists he would be much tougher on Iran. His policy declarations, however, show little, if any, difference from those of Obama. But by raising the issue in Israel, which sees Iran as an existential threat, Romney was obviously looking for support from Jewish and evangelical Christian voters in the United States.
“Make no mistake: The ayatollahs in Tehran are testing our moral defenses. They want to know who will object, and who will look the other way,” Romney says in his foreign policy speech set for delivery in Jerusalem. “My message to the people of Israel and the leaders of Iran is one and the same: I will not look away; and neither will my country.”
Romney, who received a warm welcome from Netanyahu, has said he has a “zero tolerance” policy toward Iran obtaining the capability to build a nuclear weapon.
“If Israel has to take action on its own, in order to stop Iran from developing the capability, the governor would respect that decision,” Senor told reporters in a preview of the speech.
Senor later tried to clarify his comments in a written statement, saying that the candidate “believes we should employ any and all measures to dissuade the Iranian regime from its nuclear course, and it is his fervent hope that diplomatic and economic measures will do so. In the final analysis, of course, no option should be excluded.”
Obama also has affirmed the right of Israel to defend itself, but in contrast to Romney, he has warned of the consequences of an Israeli strike on Iran.
“Already, there is too much loose talk of war,” Obama told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential pro-Israel lobbying group, in March. “Now is the time to let our increased pressure sink in and to sustain the broad international coalition we have built.”
Romney on Sunday also hailed Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in an apparent endorsement of a position held by the Jewish state but never accepted by the international community.
“It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel,” the Republican challenger said at the outset of a speech in the Holy City at which he laid out his positions on key foreign policy issues facing Israel.
Netanyahu thanked him for his remarks, later telling him: “I want to thank you for those very strong words of support and friendship for Israel and for Jerusalem that we heard today.
“Jerusalem today is marking the destruction of the city thousands of years ago. As you see it’s been rebuilt by the Jewish people, open to all the three great faiths, vibrant, bustling,” he said, shortly after the end of Tisha B’Av, when Jews traditionally fast to mourn the destruction of the two Jewish Temples.