Israeli team in US to counter new Iran assessment: press

Space War
Posted: 2007-12-17 18:13:47

An Israeli delegation is holding a series of meetings in the United States to argue that Iran still seeks nuclear arms despite a US intelligence report to the contrary, a daily said on Sunday.

The delegation left for the United States last week "with the goal of proving to the Americans that the Iranian nuclear weapons programme is definitely still in development," Maariv said, citing unnamed sources.

The team is arguing that although in 2003 the Iranians stopped a programme to build a nuclear bomb, said the tabloid, they have "since launched a new production line that is not fully known about by Western espionage officials."

A consensus report of all 16 US spy agencies in early December said Iran halted a nuclear weapons programme in 2003 and that Washington's allegations about Iran's atomic goals had been overblown for at least two years.

It added, however, that the Islamic republic could still have the capability to make a nuclear weapon by 2015.

The report dealt a blow to US and Israeli calls for the UN Security Council to impose a third set of sanctions on Iran over its failure to heed ultimatums to suspend uranium enrichment.

Widely considered the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear power, Israel regards Iran as its main foe after repeated calls by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map.

Israeli Public Security Minister Avi Dichter on Sunday became the latest senior official to warn that diplomatic efforts against Iran's atomic programme must be kept up.

"The mistaken American preconception about the Iranian nuclear (programme) could lead to a regional Yom Kippur in which Israel will be one of the threatened countries, but not only Israel," Dichter was quoted as saying in several Israeli media, referring to the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

"The size of the area that is threatened by Iran is equivalent to the range of missiles in its possession and includes countries in Europe and North Africa," warned the former chief of Israel's Shin Beth domestic intelligence agency.

But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert slammed Dichter's remarks, urging ministers to avoid expressing their personal views on Iran and the US intelligence report.

"There is no room for personal remarks by each and every minister on such a sensative issue," he said.

"These remarks do not assist the struggle against Iran's nuclear programme and do not improve our ties with the US," a senior government official quoted Olmert as saying during the weekly cabinet meeting.