| Clock ticks down to military action against Iran: Israel |
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM Israel has responded to the failure of the latest nuclear talks between world powers and Iran with a familiar refrain: sanctions must be ramped up while the clock ticks down towards possible military action.
With diplomacy at an impasse, there is satisfaction among Israeli leaders at what they see as a tough line taken by the West in the negotiations on curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Israeli political sources said on Thursday.
A member of the British negotiating team quietly visited Israel on Wednesday to brief officials on this week’s Moscow talks, the sources said, and new US and European sanctions against Iran are due to come into effect in the next two weeks.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak stuck closely to his stated line, without offering any new sense of urgency, when asked by the Washington Post how much more time Israel can allow for diplomacy to work.
“I don’t want to pretend to set timelines for the world,” he said, “but we have said loud and clear that it cannot be a matter of weeks but it (also) cannot be a matter of years”.
Preparations for any strike against Iran, which Israel and western powers suspect is trying to develop the capacity to build a nuclear bomb, are closely guarded in Israel.
But Barak said that even in the United States, which has counselled against jumping the gun while a diplomatic drive with Iran is under way, “at least on a technical level, there are a lot of preparations”.
Israeli Vice-Premier Shaul Mofaz held talks with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not commented publicly on the Moscow talks. He had complained that the months of talking had given Iran a “freebie” to continue enri-chment.
UN leader Ban Ki-moon expressed regret at the failure to make progress at nuclear talks and called for a new “intensity” of efforts to avoid a showdown.
Ban “regrets” that Iran’s talks “were unable to reach agreement on concrete and reciprocal measures at their meeting in Moscow,” his spokesman Martin Nesirky said.
Separately, the Iranian navy has announced plans to build more warships and increase its presence in international waters at a time of growing tension in the Middle East.
Navy commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said the deployments would protect Iranian cargo ships around the world, in particular in the Gulf of Aden and the northern part of the Indian Ocean.
Agencies
|
 |
|
|
| NEWS UPDATES |
|
|
|
|
|
|
