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JERUSALEM - A top Israeli strategic analyst said yesterday that armed force was the only way to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons if the international community did not impose effective sanctions.
Dr Zvi Shtauber, director of Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies, was speaking after the Foreign Ministry denied a Sunday Times report that Israeli pilots were already training to strike three targets with low-yield nuclear weapons.
The paper claimed that the Mossad spy agency expected Iran to produce enough enriched uranium to build a bomb within two years. It said the pilots had flown to Gibraltar to practise the 3220km round trip.
Mark Regev, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Israel was focusing on giving full support to diplomatic actions and the implementation of a United Nations Security Council resolution imposing limited sanctions on the Government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A nuclear Iran, he argued, was an international, not just an Israeli, problem.
Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister, has taken the same line, but has never excluded the possibility of a unilateral strike. He broke a long-standing taboo by acknowledging that Israel already had the bomb.
There is a whiff of psychological warfare in the air, as if Israel is trying to frighten Tehran or spur others to act. Reuven Pedatzur, who writes on strategic affairs for the liberal daily Haaretz, suggested: "It is possible that this was a leak done on purpose, as deterrence, to say, 'Someone better hold us back before we do something crazy'."
For Shtauber, a retired general and former Ambassador to Britain, the UN resolution was not tough enough. "Iran can still be stopped by sanctions," he said, "but I don't believe that serious sanctions will be imposed. The only alternative will be using force. Time is playing in favour of Iran. Experience shows that it is very hard to stop a state which is determined to build nuclear weapons, is capable and has a scientific infrastructure and money.
"The nuclear project enjoys wide consensus in Iran. There's no difference between radicals and liberals about it. So sooner or later, somebody will have to decide to try and stop Iran by military means because a nuclear Iran will dramatically alter the strategic situation in the Middle East. Six other states in this region have already signalled that they might follow suit."
Israel would prefer not to go it alone, but Shtauber believed that Israel could do it if push came to shove, as it did when it destroyed Saddam Hussein's Iraqi reactor in 1981. "You don't have to attack all the sites," he explained. "You can attack a couple of them."
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