Adar 10,5766
Former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Moshe
Ya'alon said Thursday that Israel definitely has a military option to
counter the Iranian nuclear threat, and that this fact must be taken into
consideration.
Ya'alon, speaking at a semiar on the Iranian nuclear
program at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Tuesday, said that a
strike on Iran could delay its nuclear program by several years. The
intervening years until Tehran got its program back on track could see a
regime change in Iran, Ya'alon said.
He said that such a strike
would be difficult to carry out from a military perspective as Iran's
nuclear facilities are spread out, but he believed that was nonetheless
feasible.
Ya'alon said that striking Iran would require more than
one attack, as a single assault would not be sufficient, but that Israel
could launch an attack on Iran in several different ways, not just from
the air.
But Ya'alon also warned that Iran would clearly hit back
hard in the event of such an attack, and cited Tehran's long-range Shihab
missiles, Katyusha rockets that Hezbollah has in its possession, and
Qassam rockets that Palestinian militants habitually fire into southern
Israel from the Gaza Strip. He added that a rise in oil prices could be
further fallout from such an assault.
The former military chief
said, however, that Israel's Arrow anti-ballistic missile system could
deal with any Shihab and Scud missiles fired from Iran.
A source
in Jerusalem said on Thursday he was bewildered by Ya'alon's remarks. The
source added that the United States also has options against Iran that it
does not talk about, Israel Radio reported.
In recent months, IDF
officers - both past and present - have visited Washington to offer their
support for a military strike should the diplomatic channels fail to bring
Iran to heel.
Ya'alon also reportedly estimated that Iran would
have the knowledge to build a nuclear bomb within six to 18 months, and
would actually have the bomb within three to five years.
Meanwhile, Iran vowed Thursday not to compromise in its nuclear
dispute with the West, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tehran would
not be bullied.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iran
was probably the number one challenge for Washington and would be a major
threat to U.S. Middle East interests if it acquired atomic bombs. Iran
says its nuclear program is only for civilian use.
Russia, anxious
to avert any move to impose United Nations sanctions on Iran, urged Tehran
to cooperate with UN nuclear inspectors.
Speaking a day after it
became clear the UN Security Council would take up the Iran standoff,
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - ultimate decision-maker in the
Islamic Republic - urged officials not to give in to Western
pressure.
"If the Iranian nation and government step back on
nuclear energy today, the story will not end there and the Americans will
make another pretext," Khamenei told senior clerics.
But he also
called for "wisdom and expediency" in handling the issue, a possible nod
to faint internal criticism in Iran that Ahmadinejad and other senior
officials have antagonized the West with needlessly inflammatory
statements.
"This nation... will not allow others to treat it with
a bullying attitude, even if [they] are international bullies,"
Ahmadinejad said in a speech in western Iran on Thursday.
"They
know they are not capable of inflicting the slightest blow on the Iranian
nation because they need the Iranian nation. They will suffer more and
they are vulnerable," he said.
Rice said Tehran's vision of the
Middle East was totally opposed to Washington's, reiterating concerns that
Iran was backing anti-Israel militants and meddling in neighboring
Iraq.
She told a congressional hearing in Washington that the
threat from Iran could grow exponentially.
"If you can take that
and multiply it by several hundred, you can imagine Iran with a nuclear
weapon and the threat they would then pose to that region," said
Rice.
"We may face no greater challenge from a single
country."
Officials from the UN Security Council's five permanent
members - the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia - met
Wednesday to discuss strategy when the Council takes up a UN dossier on
Iran early next week.
Most diplomats expect the 15-nation council,
which can impose sanctions, to issue a statement first urging Iran to
comply with resolutions by the International Atomic Energy Agency's board
that it halt all uranium enrichment activities.
The UN nuclear
watchdog's board this week forwarded a report on Iran to the council for
possible action.
"We call on Iran to examine the results of the
[IAEA] board meeting in the most serious way possible and ensure full
cooperation with the IAEA," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement
posted on its Web site.
A leading Iranian security official warned
on Wednesday that Iran could inflict "harm and pain" to match whatever
punishment Washington persuaded the Security Council to mete out to
Iran.
A senior British official described this as a veiled threat
of violence. "It's a rhetorical threat at this stage but because Iran has
a record of using violence in support of its foreign policy objectives we
have to take it seriously," he said.