As Powers Maneuver, Israel Says No Decision Yet to Attack Iran

By ISABEL KERSHNER, ELLEN BARRY and ALAN COWELL

JERUSALEM — Defense Minister Ehud Barak of Israel said on Wednesday that any decision on attacking Iran because of its nuclear program was “very far off,” apparently seeking to lower the tone of increasingly nervous discourse as powers maneuver in advance of European moves to intensify sanctions against Tehran.

At the same time, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia renewed his country’s aversion to sanctions and military threats against Tehran, while Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi of Iran said his country was ready to resume negotiations with the outside powers — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — trying to broker a settlement.

Mr. Salehi said during a visit to Turkey on Wednesday that negotiations were under way about the venue and date, Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency reported, and that the talks “will most probably be held in Istanbul.”

The previous negotiations — also in Istanbul — broke off a year ago when Iran presented its own set of preconditions, including a lifting of sanctions, that the West considered unacceptable.

Mr. Salehi made similar remarks about a resumption of the talks during a visit to Tehran two weeks ago by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, and some European officials have interpreted his remarks as an effort to buy time just days before European foreign ministers are to meet next week to discuss possible measures to curb Iran’s critical oil exports.

Speaking at an annual news conference in Moscow, Mr. Lavrov took issue with Western policy on Iran, saying a military strike would be a “disaster.”

He said sanctions now being proposed against Tehran had been couched in terms of nuclear nonproliferation but were “seriously intended to have a smothering effect on the Iranian economy and the Iranian population, probably in the hopes of provoking discontent.” 

Mr. Barak was speaking in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio at time of high tension following the assassination on Jan. 11 of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the deputy director of Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment site — an act blamed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday as the work of “the evil hands of arrogance and Zionist agents.” On Tuesday, Mr. Ahmadinejad ordered stricter security to protect Iranian scientists from what some experts have portrayed as a covert war against Iran’s nuclear program.

After the assassination, Israel’s leaders maintained a customary, cryptic silence while the White House condemned it and vigorously denied any responsibility. At least five Iranian scientists with nuclear connections have been killed since 2007.

Tehran says its uranium enrichment efforts are for peaceful civilian purposes, but that assertion jars increasingly with Western insistence, supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iranian scientists have been working toward building nuclear weapons.

Twisting the spiral of regional tension, Israel has been pressing for more aggressive and immediate American-led sanctions against Iran while the Iranians have threatened to shut off the Strait of Hormuz, the maritime conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil.

Mr. Barak’s remarks also came ahead of an imminent visit to Israel by the American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey. Israeli media commentators have suggested that General Dempsey was coming in part to warn Israel against going it alone in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Mr. Barak denied that suggestion, saying that military chiefs “are concerned with formulating different military options and bringing their views to the political leadership, and don’t deal with delivering diplomatic messages.”

Still, efforts seem to be under way on both sides to reduce regional anxieties.

Israel and the United States agreed this week to postpone major joint missile-defense exercises that had been scheduled for the spring. Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, cited “diplomatic and regional reasons, the tensions and instability,” as factors in the delay.

In the interview with Army Radio on Wednesday Mr. Barak reiterated the Israeli assessment that Iran has not started building nuclear weapons.

“The Iranians have not ended the oversight exercised by the International Atomic Energy Agency,” he said, adding, “They have not done that because they know that that would constitute proof of the military nature of their nuclear program and that would provoke stronger international sanctions or other types of action against their country.”

The official Islamic Republic News Agency confirmed on Tuesday that a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency would visit Iran for three days starting Jan. 29.

Israel has kept open the possibility of military action against Iran, saying that a credible threat is necessary to back up the sanctions effort.

In a veiled reference to what some experts view as a kind of approaching deadline, Mr. Barak said that Iran was “focused on creating a reality in which its nuclear program would be immune from physical attack.”

He was apparently referring to Iran’s plans to start production at a second major uranium enrichment site, the Fordo plant, near the city of Qum. The new facility is buried deep underground and is considered far more resistant to airstrikes than the existing enrichment site at Natanz.

For Israel, the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran, which opposes Israel’s right to exist, is by far its greatest strategic challenge.

Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, chief of the Israeli military’s planning directorate, said Tuesday that apart from the obvious risk to Israel, a nuclear Iran would create a nuclear arms race in the region and set off a process that could lead to “a global nuclear jungle.”  

In addition, he said that extremist groups in Lebanon and Gaza would become more aggressive and daring once operating under an Iranian nuclear umbrella and that Israel would be more limited in its strategic options.

On Tuesday, the European Union and United States took new steps to raise the pressure. Denmark, the rotating president of the European Union, proposed that starting July 1, all countries in that body impose a full embargo of Iranian oil, setting a timetable for that threatened step for the first time. In South Korea, a major importer of Iranian oil, a senior American diplomat, Robert J. Einhorn, urged buyers there to reduce their dependence and “unwind their financial dealings with the Central Bank of Iran.”

A new law signed by President Obama, if fully enforced, would penalize any foreign entity that does business with the Central Bank, the primary conduit for purchases of Iran’s oil, its most important export. While the law allows some leeway, it is widely seen as the most punitive step yet taken by the United States against Iran.