Obama won’t trip over Israeli prime minister’s Iran ‘red line’

US President Barack Obama visits Israel this week at the onset of spring — the “red line” previously drawn by his host, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to trigger an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.
But an Israeli-Iranian war, Washington’s nightmare as it tries to scale back defense commitments abroad, does not appear trip-wire imminent.
Officials and analysts say Iran warded off Israel’s threat by calibrating mid-level uranium enrichment so it does not accrue enough fuel for a potential first bomb — the threshold Netanyahu warned about in a United Nations speech in September.
He was presenting a worst-case extrapolation from UN nuclear inspector reports. The most recent of those, however, found a slowdown in the stockpiling of the 20 percent fissile uranium that Iran, in the face of mounting Western suspicions, says is part of an entirely peaceful program. Netanyahu has not publicly revised the spring-to-summer 2013 dating for his “red line.” But several Israeli officials privately acknowledged it had been deferred, maybe indefinitely.
“The red line was never a deadline,” one said.
The chief US military officer, Gen. Martin Dempsey, has questioned Israel’s ability to deliver lasting damage to Iran’s distant, defended facilities. Netanyahu, meanwhile, makes little secret of preferring that Washington take the lead in any war.
Yet while mobilizing Gulf forces and saying it was open to military force as a last resort, the Obama administration has resisted Israeli calls to present Tehran with a clear ultimatum.
Interviewed by Israel’s top-rated television news program on Thursday, Obama voiced cautious hope that negotiations, re-launched last month between the United States, five other world powers and Iran, could still curb its disputed nuclear drive.
“There’s a window — not an infinite period of time — but a window of time where we can resolve this diplomatically, and that it is in all of our interests,” he told Channel Two TV.
The US “red line” was Iran reaching the verge of acquiring a nuclear bomb, Obama said, adding: “That would take over a year or so ... But obviously we don’t want to cut it too close.” Confidence in Obama is not unanimous among Netanyahu’s circle. While one Israeli official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said “American presidents don’t bluff” and that therefore Obama should be trusted, others worried Iran might elude scrutiny and dash to nuclear arms capability.
A Feb. 21 UN report said Iran had 167 kg (367 lb) of mid-level enriched uranium, in gas form, after converting some of the stockpile to solid reactor fuel. Experts say it would need 240-250 kg (530-550 lb) of the gaseous material for a bomb, though the fuel would have to be further enriched to 90 percent purity.
Yet Iran has also been expanding centrifuges so it could rapidly ramp up mid-level enrichment if it chose, diplomats say.
Netanyahu alluded to those developments on March 4 when he reiterated his “red line” in a speech to a pro-Israel lobby in Washington, saying Iran was “putting itself in a position to cross that line very quickly once it decides to do so.”
The United States sounds more secure about nuclear inspections and intelligence monitoring of the Iranians, as well as in its ability to intervene militarily at short notice. “We assess Iran could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of WGU (weapons-grade uranium) before this activity is discovered,” US National Intelligence Director James Clapper said on Tuesday.
Gary Samore, Obama’s former nuclear nonproliferation adviser, disputed the idea that Iran would break out of the UN inspections regime with just one bomb’s worth of fuel, or that it would be capable of making a quick switch to the highest level of uranium enrichment, given its technical lags.
Israel, which is reputed to have the region’s sole atomic arsenal, has spoken about being ready to attack Iran for close to a decade — rhetoric some Israeli officials say was designed, at least in part, to stiffen the determination of war-wary world powers to find a diplomatic alternative through sanctions.