The latest talk of war emerged after a respected Israeli daily, Haaretz, carried a story saying the US intelligence community had changed its mind about Iran’s nuclear program and reported to President Obama that Iran had made major advances in its nuclear program and was much closer to a bomb.
A White House spokesman said that was wrong. He said there had been no change in the long-standing assessment of the Iranian nuclear program. “We continue to assess that Iran is not on the verge of achieving a nuclear weapon,” he said. “We believe that there is time and space to continue to pursue a diplomatic path, backed by growing international pressure on the Iranian government.”
But that didn’t calm the war talk. In Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was quoted as telling the cabinet Sunday that other threats to Israeli national security were “dwarfed” by the prospect of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.
That remark dwarfed the appointment by Netanyahu of a new cabinet minister who has been on the record as opposed to attacking Iran.
Avraham Dichter, named as the new civil defense minister, has publicly said Israel ought not to go it alone in trying to stop Iran’s nuclear program. In public comments in February, Dichter said Israel “is not a superpower” and should “not lead a world offensive against Iran” although it needs to prepare in case the world fails to take action on Iran.
There has been much speculation in Israel that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have already decided to go to war against Iran and will launch an attack on their own initiative without consulting the security cabinet, which now includes Dichter.
The mass circulation daily Yediot Aharonot headlined Friday, “Netanyahu and Barak are determined to attack Iran in the autumn.” The article said that apart from those two men, “not one senior official in the establishment—not in the military, not in the defense establishment, nor even the president [Shimon Peres]—currently supports an attack by Israel.”
But Barak scoffed at all that war talk as nonsensical. He said any decision to attack would require a vote by the cabinet, which currently has 29 members. “The image created in the public realm, as if two men sit and conjure fantasies or reach decisions on their own is absolute malarkey,” Barak said.
In Tehran, Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi seemed to assume that the newspaper reports represented the Israeli government. He accused Israel’s leaders of engaging in “psychological warfare” against Iran and warned that Israel was leading to the destruction of its “war machine” by its “warmongering” remarks.