OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel is readying all options to force Iran to halt its atomic program, Israel’s top general told a parliamentary panel Tuesday. Gabi Ashkenazi, chief-of-staff of Israel’s armed forces said he expected world leaders to decide by the close of 2009 which course of action to take, to try to stop the Iranian program, an Israeli official told reporters.
“We are readying all the options and decision-makers will have to consider which paths to take” to stop Iran’s nuclear development, he told Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Hinting Israel was still weighing a military option to stop what it sees as a plan to produce nuclear weapons – which Iran denies – Ashkenazi suggested diplomatic or economic sanctions may also help.
“If the Iranians understand they will have to pay a steep price, it wouldn’t be illogical or unreasonable to say they may change their current direction,” the official quoted Ashkenazi as saying.
Israel routinely declines comment on international assessments that it currently possesses the region’s only nuclear arsenal, of more than 100 atomic warheads.
Ashkenazi said Iran played an active role in what he called a “battle being waged between radicals and moderates for hegemony in the Middle East,” and was a key supplier of weapons to two enemies of Israel – Hizbullah of Lebanon and the Islamist Hamas group in the Gaza Strip.
“We cannot protect the entire country with an iron dome,” he said, using the name of an interceptor system for short-range rockets that Israel has plans to deploy in two years’ time.
The US said on Monday that it is willing to give Iran time to decide whether to accept a UN-brokered deal; designed to allay international suspicions of Iran’s atomic arms aspirations, which has drawn objections from Tehran.
“There have been communications back and forth. We are in extra innings in these negotiations. That’s sometimes the way these things go,” said Glyn Davies, US ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency – Reuters
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