Barak in UK: Is Tehran's time up?

By Joseph Millis - Thursday 3rd November 2011


Ehud Barak: Iran on the agenda in London?

Pressure was mounting on Iran this week as Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak flew to London to hold high-level talks with senior officials, including his counterpart Philip Hammond and National Security Adviser Sir Peter Ricketts.

Barak was also due today to meet Foreign Secretary William Hague to discuss the peace process and to attend a dinner of the UK Friends of the Association for the Welfare of Israeli Soldiers. After his meeting with Hague, the Israeli minister said: "Relations between Britain and Israel are very important for the security of Israel and in international struggles considering the special standing Britain holds in the Middle East and in Europe."

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Barak's talks came as the Guardian reported that Britain's armed forces were stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran amid mounting concern over Tehran's nuclear enrichment programme. The Islamic republic, said officials, was proving "surprisingly resilient" to Western sanctions and was becoming "newly aggressive".

And in Israel, there was growing speculation that it was close to launching a military strike against Tehran's well-hidden nuclear facilities. According to the Guardian report, British ministers have been told that the Iranians have been moving some new, more efficient centrifuges into the heavily fortified military base dug beneath a mountain at the city of Qom.

Israeli media reported on Wednesday that the Air Force had conducted a long-range bombing exercise in Italy. And people living in Israel's heavily populated central region got a fright on Wednesday morning when they saw a rocket's smoke trail in the sky, with some fearing it was a missile attack from Gaza or the start of a confrontation with Iran. The army moved swiftly to calm frazzled nerves, explaining that it was testing a new rocket propulsion system. The media speculated that it was a test for a new, longer-range Jericho ballistic missile.

After the test, Barak said in London: "This is an impressive technological achievement, and an important step in Israel's advancement in the field of missiles and space, which has been planed for a long time. The successful test is further evidence of the the highest level of engineers, technicians, and members of the Israeli defence industries."


Jerusalem sources told the Jewish News that Israel was "giving the international effort and sanctions more time". But the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, would not be drawn into how long Israel would wait. "We are weighing our options. Nothing is off the table," the source noted.

In Israel, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Wednesday that Iran posed the largest, most dangerous threat to the current world order, adding that Israel expected that the international community will step up efforts to act against it.

Speaking on Israel Radio following recent reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Barak were pushing the cabinet to support an attack on Iran's nuclear sites, Lieberman rejected the public discussion on the subject.

Nearly all "the reports have no connection to reality," he told Israel Radio, but added that there was much that must be done regarding the Iranian issue. "The international community must prove its ability to make decisions and enforce tough sanctions on Iran's central bank as well as halt the purchasing of oil."

His cabinet colleague, Benny Begin, went further. In an interview with Army Radio on Wednesday, he said: "There has never been a breakdown of responsibility and a campaign of recklessness like there is today."

He was particularly scathing of the Yediot Ahronot daily which ran a front-page column entitled, "Atomic Pressure", which alleged that Netanyahu and Barak were planning to convince cabinet ministers of the necessity of striking Iran's nuclear programme. The media attention, Begin said, "pales in comparison to the acts of [whistleblower] Anat Kamm, for which she was sentenced to four and a half years in prison."

And in a thinly-veiled reference to former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who has been warning against such an attack, Begin said that public servants "swore to guard state secrets forever, also after they leave their positions".

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