Israel sounds alarm on Iran's nuclear efforts

Israeli leaders fear that an Iranian bomb would undermine their nation's security even if Tehran never detonated it. That Israel has its own nuclear arsenal would not counteract the psychological and strategic blow, they believe.

Israel began secretly preparing in the early 1990s for a possible air raid on Iran's then-nascent nuclear facilities and has been making oblique public statements about such planning for three years.

What is new is Israel's abandonment of quiet diplomacy to rally others to its side. Until a few months ago, Israeli leaders worried that high-profile lobbying would backfire and provoke accusations that they were trying to drag the United States and its allies into a war.

Israel's possession of nuclear weapons since the late 1960s, though rarely acknowledged by its leaders, has worked as a deterrent until now.

"For decades, the Arab countries … knew they couldn't beat Israel, so there was no coalition forming against us," said Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, director of the Defense Ministry's Political-Military Bureau.

But soon, he said, "the Iranians could create a belief that they can beat us, and under their umbrella create an axis that will destabilize the Middle East."

Also, Sunni Arab countries ― Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Jordan and Libya ― could strive to build atomic weapons to compete with Shiite Iran, making any regional conflict a potential nuclear tinderbox, he said.

In such an environment, many Israelis might flee. A December poll in the newspaper Maariv found that 27% of Israelis would leave or consider leaving if Iran acquired nuclear weapons. Two-thirds of those surveyed said they believed Iran would drop a nuclear weapon on Israel.

Apocalyptic scenarios involving Iran dominated last month's annual Herzliya conference, Israel's premier gathering of foreign policy, defense and security specialists. Participants pressed several U.S. presidential hopefuls on how they planned to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Vice Premier Shimon Peres told students in Qatar last week that Israel's problem was with Ahmadinejad, not the Iranian people, and it did not "intend to use military action."

If Ahmadinejad were to fall, "someone else would come to power, someone less hostile, and the question of whether they have nuclear capability will be less important," said Uri Lubrani, a former Israeli ambassador to Iran who advises the Defense Ministry and opposes military action.

That, however, appears to be a minority view in the government and defense establishment. Other officials and analysts argue that voluntary sanctions are unlikely to win full support from European countries and in any case would be undermined by Russia, China and India. They say time is too short and the stakes too high to bet solely on a change in government.

"We cannot sit back and wait for a revolution," said Isaac Ben-Israel, a reserve air force major general who heads Tel Aviv University's Security Studies Program.

Ben-Israel helped plan the 1981 Israeli air raid that destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. He said Israel had the capacity to set back Iran's atomic program by striking a few key targets, such as its uranium conversion facility at Esfahan, its enrichment facility at Natanz and its heavy-water reactor at Arak.

'A new front in Iran'

But Israel lacks the capability for a sustained offensive that might be needed to strike the bulk of Iran's facilities. Because of that, Ben-Israel and other officials say, Israel would prefer to join in an American-led attack on Iran ― a scenario Bush has refused to rule out. But they worry that Bush has been so weakened at home by the Iraq war that "opening a new front in Iran may not be feasible for him," Ben-Israel said.

Israelis have been hinting strongly that they are prepared to act on their own. In an article in last week's issue of the New Republic, Halevi and Michael Oren, also a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, wrote that if Israel decided to strike, it would probably do so within 18 months.