Iran: The conundrum continues

Iran: The conundrum continues

from Nuclear Weapons, Proliferation and Policy Doctrine

Washington (UPI) Mar 13, 2012 - Despite U.S. President Barak Obama's statements indicating the United States has Israel's back in any military confrontation with Iran, a major chasm remains. Washington is urging prudence and patience, while Tel Aviv says patience has its limits and time is running out to conduct pre-emptive military strikes on Tehran's nuclear enrichment sites.
"The United States is big and distant, Israel is smaller and closer to Iran, and naturally, we have different capabilities," Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told Israel's Channel One television after talks with Obama in Washington. "So the American clock regarding preventing Iranian nuclearization is not the Israeli one. The Israeli clock works, obviously, according to a different schedule."
Israel, he said, must never be in a position where it couldn't defend itself.
Israel's position is understandable. Iranian leaders have repeatedly threatened to wipe Israel off the map and possession of nuclear weapons would bring that within their means. Iran is also in the process of moving its centrifuges for nuclear fuel enrichment to locations underground and within mountains, much more secure from aerial bombardment.
Washington's position is also understandable. Both the United States and the European Union have enacted economic sanctions that, once in effect, will severely hobble the Iranian economy as never before. The hope, of course, is that Iran will negotiate and abandon nuclear enrichment, which the West suspects is intended for the production of nuclear weapons.