Israel Increases Pressure on U.S. to Act on Iran
By JODI RUDOREN and DAVID E. SANGER
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ramped up pressure on the
White House on Sunday to put the buildup of Iran’s nuclear program ahead
of other crises in the Middle East, complaining of a lack of urgency on
the issue and saying that the Obama administration must demonstrate “by
action” to Iran’s newly elected president that “the military option
which is on the table is truly on the table.”
Speaking via satellite on the CBS News program “Face the Nation,”
Mr. Netanyahu expressed concern that Iran was pursuing “alternate
routes” to a nuclear weapons capability, including a plutonium bomb,
even while stopping just short of the specific enriched-uranium levels
he had set in a speech at the United Nations last year as a “red line”
for military action.
He also reiterated his familiar demands that Iran must be forced to stop
all enrichment of nuclear material, ship its current stockpile out of
the country and shut down a deep underground enrichment site, called
Fordo, that Israeli military officials acknowledge they probably do not
have the ability to destroy.
Mr. Netanyahu said those demands “should be backed up with ratcheted
sanctions,” adding, “They have to know you’ll be prepared to take
military action; that’s the only thing that will get their attention.”
Formally, the United States agrees with Mr. Netanyahu’s demands. But in
negotiations that fell apart last spring, the Obama administration
appeared willing to lift some sanctions in return for far more modest
“confidence building” steps, and seems likely to be willing to leave
Iran with some limited nuclear production capability in return for
highly intrusive inspections.
American, European, Russian and Chinese officials are meeting on Tuesday
to review the proposals that Iran rejected and to decide whether to
present them anew to Iran’s president-elect, Hassan Rowhani, a former
nuclear negotiator.
“We don’t know how much influence Rowhani will have,” a senior
administration official told reporters in Washington on Friday, before
Mr. Netanyahu’s comments. But the official added that Mr. Rowhani’s tone
suggested he was “going in a different direction” and might be open to a
broad deal that would result in the lifting of sanctions, particularly
those that have drastically cut into Iran’s oil revenue.
The American official, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity, added that “we are open to direct talks.”
In the interview on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu was far more suspicious of
Iran, and of Mr. Rowhani, calling him a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” whose
strategy is to “smile and build a bomb.” The prime minister said that
because Israel is closer and “more vulnerable,” it would “have to
address this question of how to stop Iran, perhaps before the United
States does.”
The CBS interview followed similar remarks Mr. Netanyahu made Sunday morning at the opening of his cabinet meeting
here, part of a campaign planned in the coming days to return the
world’s attention to the Iranian nuclear program. The implied criticism
of Washington’s approach since Mr. Rowhani’s election came as Israeli
and Palestinian officials were expecting Secretary of State John Kerry
to return to the Middle East this week for his sixth visit in four
months to try and revive peace talks.
On Sunday evening, Mr. Netanyahu spoke with President Mahmoud Abbas of
the Palestinian Authority and offered greetings for the holy month of
Ramadan, which began last week. “I hope that we will have an opportunity
to speak to each other and not just on holidays, and that we begin
negotiations,” Mr. Netanyahu said, according to a statement released by
his office.
Israeli leaders were rankled by American officials’ having confirmed over the weekend that Israel had attacked
a shipment of advanced Russian-made antiship missiles in Latakia,
Syria, this month. Yuval Steinitz, a senior minister close to Mr.
Netanyahu, said on Israeli radio that “intelligence leaks are bad
whether they come from there or from here.” Uzi Landau, another
government minister, added, “The less they talk, the better it is for
everyone.”
Asked about the Latakia attack on “Face the Nation,” Mr. Netanyahu said
that he was “not in the habit of saying what we did or we didn’t do,”
but that his policy was “to prevent the transfer of dangerous weapons to
Hezbollah,” the Lebanese Shiite militant organization, “and other
terror groups.”
Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States,
said in an interview that tension over revelations about Israeli
operations did not threaten the two countries’ “longstanding, complex
relationship with manifold interests.”
“Let’s say that Israel would rather this would not have been leaked out
of Washington,” he said. “So be it. These squeaks are part of the
relationship.”
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